Teaching 50,000 Students Online: APEI CEO Wally Boston (Part 3)

SM: When you came on board there were 4,400 students. What happened next? WB: We had to take a step back in the sense that we had added a lot of degrees very hastily. In assessing the quality of our programs, we realized that many of the ones we had were just placed into the

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Teaching 50,000 Students Online: APEI CEO Wally Boston (Part 2)

SM: How was accreditation handled? WB: From 1996 through 2000 the university had steady growth. Right around 2001 Jim made the decision that he wanted to achieve regional accreditation.

Teaching 50,000 Students Online: APEI CEO Wally Boston (Part 1)

Wally is the CEO and president of American Public University System and its parent company American Public Education, Inc (APEI). He is also a member of the West Virginia Governor’s Advisory Council for Technology in Education. He is a CPA, CMA and Fellow of the Healthcare Financial Management Association. He earned a BA from Duke

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A Public University’s Online Journey: Hunt Lambert of CSU (Part 7)

SM: Is online education a trend that is emerging across all states in the US? HL: I would say that every state has tried or is trying to do this. One thing that makes our story interesting is that right now, every other state entity that has tried to do this has failed in one

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A Public University’s Online Journey: Hunt Lambert of CSU (Part 6)

SM: What role does the faculty play in your program? Do they largely focus on putting the courses together? HL: There are two roles. We have a course development team that builds the course. We also have a faculty member assigned to every 20 undergrad students and 17 grad students who are expected to be

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A Public University’s Online Journey: Hunt Lambert of CSU (Part 5)

SM: Your thesis was that CSU’s charter was public education for Colorado, so you wanted to use proven online teaching methodologies and apply them to the Colorado brand. What were the mechanics of making that happen? HL: I told the board that they needed to set us up as a separate campus and give us

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A Public University’s Online Journey: Hunt Lambert of CSU (Part 4)

SM: I imagine that at some point your friends at Colorado State University asked you to take on the online education product? HL: By that time, I had already gotten the Entrepreneurship Center up and running and had just created the Office of Economic Development. That was done to try and grow the value of

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A Public University’s Online Journey: Hunt Lambert of CSU (Part 3)

SM: At this point of your career, the Internet was not yet in full swing but you had done a lot of work with telecom companies. What comes next? HL: I came back to the States in 1991 and headed strategic planning for US West. The biggest focus we had there was building the businesses

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