“A game changer,” predicts OU president, Dr. Leslie N. Pollard
BLACKNEWS.COM – The Atlanta-based Southern Association of Colleges and Schools has approved Oakwood University providing adult learners a business degree completion online, it was announced today.
“Oakwood Online University,” a concept first spelled out by then-new Oakwood president, Dr. Leslie N. Pollard, in “Vision 2020,” his first address as its 11th president on January 25, 2011, will start as a pilot program in January 2014, as Organizational Management (business), one of its five LEAP adult degree completion programs, will be offered both as fully online and continued as its on-site track.
“Through our LEAP program, Oakwood Online University will be able to reach adult learners all over the world, who have been wanting to complete a lifelong dream: to finish their college degrees and improve their standards of living and the quality of life for themselves and their families,” summarized Mrs. Hyacinth Burton, Dean of the OU School of Business & Adult and Continuing Education. Additionally, she continued, OOU achieves one of the primary visions of our university strategic plans for academic offerings, enrollment and more diverse learners.
In his initial “Vision 20/20 Statement” 2011 address, Pollard forecasted, “By 2020, OOU is launched: Oakwood Online University. . . . The lower-cost revenue from Oakwood Online University helps grow the amount of institutional aid to needy students in our residential program.”
More recently and in his annual presidential address at the school’s First Chapel program on Thursday, August 22, President Pollard announced several of what he called “game changers”:
• “Recovering a base of industry at Oakwood University . . . that will employ our students and bring in non-tuition revenue . . .”;
• Breaking ground for the 11,700 sq. ft. Media Center and the Oakwood University Broadcasting Network, “to produce our own products – our own talk shows, our own dramas, our own editorials and religious news casts – and market them on our own terms, in our own voice” – which occurred on Wednesday, October 9; and
• OOU, as “we (the President’s Council) voted to fast-track OOU’s development process by buying into the HBCU Online Consortium, supported by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This means we will immediately save hundreds of course-development hours by acquiring access to collaboratively-developed course content. Oakwood Online University will be a game changer. We will no longer be bounded by local geography, but can make Oakwood University accessible to students around the world.”
For more information on Oakwood Online University and its program offerings, contact Mrs. Hyacinth Burton, OU School of Business, 256-726-7081.
