College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University

Mastering distance education

The statistics department has transformed a master's program designed for General Motors to other corporate partners.

It would be an understatement to say developing a distance graduate education program in the statistics department was a challenge.

The program had to overcome legitimate faculty concerns. It went through a rocky first year where only ten percent of the students continued on.

And just this year, the company that provided the initial interest wants out.

But along the way, the statistics department, under the direction of Dean Isaacson, professor and head of the statistics department, has offered graduate education at a distance and has been successful.

The idea that ISU could offer its highly respected master's degree off-campus wasn't discussed until General Motors came calling.

"General Motors called in 1992 and said they wanted to talk to us about a distance education program," Isaacson said. "They wanted to offer a master's degree in statistics for their employees. General Motors told me they chose Iowa State because they had researched it and identified our master's program as one of the top programs in the country."

The statistics department was not initially receptive to the idea. Faculty members were afraid participation in this project would reduce the quality of the on-campus degree.

They also wondered if a quality program could be developed from a distance.

The faculty was so concerned that General Motor's request was turned down.

The project didn't die there and after additional discussion, GM and ISU became partners, but with important guidelines. It was essential that the distance learning program be at the same level as the on-campus master's program including coursework, written exams, a creative component and the oral exam.

The same courses offered through distance education would be offered on-campus. The courses would be videotaped and shipped to the individual plants where those students would have approximately a week to watch them. A teaching assistant would be assigned to help the faculty member with the increased questions from off-campus students, making sure those students got the same timely responses as on-campus students did.

The automaker didn't blink an eye in saying yes.

"They didn't want a different type of degree," Isaacson said. "They wanted our degree, not something else."

To get the program rolling, General Motors gave the department a $40,000 grant to create two new introductory 400-level courses. Robert Stephenson, professor of statistics, spent a summer planning for the courses before they were offered in 1994-95 with a capped enrollment of 60 GM employees.

About half of that class eventually decided to pursue a master's degree in statistics from ISU. They weren't prepared for what was next.

"That first grad level course came as a shock to them," Isaacson said. "The GM employees in our program typically had no real background in statistics. They were managers or engineers. Only ten percent survived the first year."

Isaacson went back to General Motors and explained the situation, expecting to hear complaints. Instead it was a continued insistence from GM to march forward as long as the program remained the same.

The quality has remained the same and recently the first two GM students have graduated. Isaacson expects a third to earn a master's this year with maybe two more possible.

That will be it however. General Motors, realizing how tough ISU's statistics master's is, will discontinue the program, but not their association with Iowa State. Stephenson will continue to teach the introductory statistics course to employees getting advanced degrees from other universities in different disciplines.