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Welcome to Embry-Riddle's campus without walls - the Extended Campus.

A flexible, inventive, anything-but-traditional system, the University's largest program has one purpose: deliver an education to those who can't come to campus to get one.

It's an education every bit as comprehensive and rigorous as that offered on the University's Daytona Beach, Fla., and Prescott, Ariz., campuses.

Three-way delivery

• The College of Career Education (CCE) operates more than 115 centers and teaching sites in seven nations. They serve approximately 13,000 students in 37 states, including Alaska and Hawaii, and 1,500 in England, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain, and Turkey.
• The Department of Independent Studies serves another 4,000 students in their homes with a combination of specially designed print materials, audiotapes, videotapes, and online computer instruction.
• The Division of Continuing Education schedules non-credit workshops, seminars, and training for aviation professionals in selected cities.

"There always seems to be a course beginning and ending," says Becky Poppleton, assistant director at the Colorado Springs center in Ft. Carson.

Extended Campus enrollments are based on one course per student. Most centers have about 100 students taking one or two courses at any given time. The number of course enrollments per year can range from 250 at small centers to 1,200 at the larger centers.

"The approximately 15,000 students taking courses through CCE and Independent Studies are equivalent to over 6,511 full-time students, roughly the same enrollment as Embry-Riddle's two residential campuses," says Robert Hall, CCE's academic dean.

From salutes to suits

"If you want to stay in aviation - whether in the military or in civilian life - you can't get a high quality education any cheaper than to have the government pay a large part of it," Flancher says. "And no other university besides Embry-Riddle offers as many different opportunities to complete your degree while you work and if you have to move."

"For military people who want to make the transition to a civilian aviation career, we're the Number One game in town," he says. "We're the only American university offering aviation education in Europe, and we're the largest provider of off-duty aviation education in the U.S."

During the past several years, however, as the military has been closing bases and reducing manpower, CCE has moved more aggressively to deliver its programs to civilians. While military personnel still fill more classroom desks overall, students who wear a suit and don't salute now make up 32 percent of the program's enrollment.

When the Alameda military base in the San Francisco area closed, the CCE center moved to a downtown office building and opened teaching sites at the Oakland, Livermore, Concord, and Hayward airports. When Moffett Federal Airfield ceased to be a military installation, the center there recruited more students from NASA Ames Laboratory and Sunnyvale.

Eighty percent of the students at Embry-Riddle's Patrick Air Force Base center in Melbourne, Fla., work at the Kennedy Space Center for the government and independent contractors. The same percentage holds true at its March Air Reserve center in Riverside, Calif. When the base there went from active duty to reserve, the center reached out from teaching sites at the Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Ontario airports to recruit at Boeing, Federal Express, and UPS.

A flexible network

As they're transferred, students typically attend classes at two or more education centers, usually located on or near a military base, before they finally finish their degree, says Poppleton at the Colorado Springs center. An example is her husband, Brian, an Army officer previously stationed in Europe.

"When a new student transfers in from, say Fort Bragg, they call me and I call that center to get their records and see where they are in the program," she says. "It takes lots of personal service to set them up quickly with the courses they need."

That network of centers makes it easy for civilians to complete their coursework, as well. When Valerie Jackson, pursuing an MBA in aviation on Embry-Riddle's Daytona Beach campus, took a semester off to serve an internship at Los Angeles Airport, she decided to test the waters and send out her resume. Boeing hired her as a senior engineer in its airport compatibility group. She's now taking evening classes at the March center's Long Beach site and plans to pick up her degree in December.

Students motivated, demanding

Like small businesses, centers are also able to tailor their programs to meet the needs of the local market. For example, the Patuxent River, Md., center has added a specialization in logistics to its BSMTO degree. The area is a Navy headquarters for logistics activity.

Although the number of female students is growing, the typical CCE student is a man in his early to mid-thirties, who completes up to seven courses per year. In Europe, he's an Army or Air Force pilot, although air traffic controllers and maintenance technicians also enroll in classes.

"Their attitude is very professional," says Poppleton in Colorado Springs. "Most of them are officers who have their goals in sight. They know they won't be promoted, or be competitive in the civilian market, unless they finish their degree."

The March center's civilian students, many of them senior managers, are "highly motivated, very demanding . . . they won't stand for anything but quality education," says Director Donna Brubaker.

Real-life learning

For example, an instructor at Pax River recently took students on a field trip to study airport signage at National Airport, 60 miles away. Another instructor, who was in the midst of setting up a cargo airline with a group of investors, made it part of the airline operations course he was teaching at the March center.

"He was intimately involved with all the issues we were studying - regulations, marketing, what type of planes to use," enthuses Patrick Ross, who was studying for a master's in aeronautical science at the time. "In some cases, we were helping him, with the experience we had from our own jobs."

That mix of motivation and know-how continues to lure instructors like Bill Heron, who has been teaching airframe and powerplant mechanics at the Lakenheath/Mildenhall center in England for 17 years. He also teaches at the Cambridge Regional College in London, where "it takes a whole year to cover the same stuff" with younger, greener students. "At Embry-Riddle, we do it in eight weeks, then move on to the next course."

Although centers advertise their educational offerings, the best recruiting results come from the word-of-mouth buzz by students who are happy with flexible scheduling, extra-mile service, practical instruction, and affordable tuition. Several centers also have entered into contracts with area companies to teach their employees, sometimes on-site. For Northrop Grumman employees considering the master's degree in technical management offered at the Patrick AFB center in Melbourne, Fla., there's an added selling point - they get to keep the $2,000 laptop and modem that come with the program.

In a class of their own

For some degrees, the distance learning program evaluates its seasoned students and grants college credits for what they already know. "They measured what I had previously studied, plus my career experiences, and defined what courses I needed," says Lou Bartolotta, director of strategic planning for Agusta Aerospace Corp. He is completing a bachelor's in professional aeronautics he started when he was flying helicopters over North Sea oil rigs off the coast of Scotland.

"In today's leaner, meaner economy, a degree can give even experienced people more career mileage," says Tom Pettit, director of independent studies. It's not hard to find those who feel their enrollment in the distance learning program helped them keep their jobs while coworkers were being laid off.

Although distance learners lack the atmosphere of a classroom shared with other students, there are distinct advantages. Research shows that the anonymity of the keyboard frees them to be themselves in formulating and expressing their ideas and that they participate at higher rates than in traditional classes.

"It's a fantastic way to learn - almost real-time," says Richard Robinett, a human factors engineer at Pratt & Whitney, who earned two degrees in the Embry-Riddle program while working in three countries. "The videotaped classes are current. It's like they were taped the previous semester."

But even with the best study materials, distance learning requires lots of self discipline, says Jane DeLisle, a US Airways pilot who earned an MAS. "You just say, 'the next three days I'm going to school,' and get out the materials and study."

Distance learning allows students to finish a course when they've fulfilled its requirements, then move on to their next course. They can do it according to their own timetable, which most often includes a full-time job and a family.

"I raised four kids and insisted they get degrees. I felt like a hypocrite if I didn't get one myself," says prominent aviation writer and TWA captain Barry Schiff, who earned a BS in "pro aero." He picked Embry-Riddle because "it appears to have the best such program, and I liked their reputation."

Continuing education

On the Daytona Beach and Prescott campuses, short courses are offered for certification in aviation safety. In Daytona Beach, the division's Teacher Resource Center, directed by Patricia Ryan, organizes an Aviation Career Academy for secondary school students and conducts workshops for teachers on using aviation and aerospace in their math and science classes.

The division also develops courses requested by Daytona Beach-area manufacturers. Offerings include special short courses and seminars in robotics, design, and manufacturing designed to meet the need of local companies for well trained workers.

Jeffrey Atwood, director of continuing education, says his division has gained recognition as a Microsoft Authorized Academic Training Program for on-campus computer training courses it plans to offer to Daytona Beach-area residents.

Extended Campus students are anything but traditional. Instead of strolling across an ivy-covered campus to their next class, they commute from a full day's work to education centers in the US and Europe. They boot up a computer in the privacy of their own homes. They fly in for a week-long specialized training course. But the education they are getting is the same challenging, up-to-the minute education the University gives to students on its residential campuses. That's the Embry-Riddle tradition.

By Robert Ross

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