Online Campus Promotion

For the Chancellor of a New Online Campus, Every Workday Is About Branding

By Michael Sewall

For Allison C. Barber, being chancellor of Indiana's newest university doesn't involve living in an institution-owned house, mingling with students on the quad, or working out of a large administration building. Her job, she says, is as much about building a brand as it is about academics.

The institution she leads, WGU Indiana, exists online, run out of several cubicles in an office building in Indianapolis. Its mission is to meet the learning needs of adults in a state that ranks 44th in the nation in the share of people older than 25 with postsecondary educations.

Indiana's governor, Mitchell E. Daniels, a Republican, proposed the effort after he joined the Board of Trustees of Western Governors University this year. WGU Indiana is the first state-specific subsidiary of Western Governors, a private, nonprofit institution established in 1997 by 19 governors to provide an inexpensive, flexible college opportunity for underserved groups.

When he signed the executive order creating WGU Indiana on June 11, the governor said the institution "meets a very urgent and specific need" by offering an alternative "for adults who want to pursue a college degree with all the other demands in their lives."

Ms. Barber, 46, faces an upward climb. Of the 20,000 students enrolled in Western Governors nationally, fewer than 300 were from Indiana.

But she thinks the new institution can meet the state's needs, along with those of students, by providing training in sought-after skills. Western Governors offers more than 50 accredited undergraduate and master's degree programs in four areas: business, education, information technology, and health care. Because it is competency-based, students don't have to spend time learning things they already know, Ms. Barber said, allowing for a quicker path to a degree. The average time it takes a student to graduate with a bachelor's degree is 30 to 35 months, and tuition is about $6,000 per year. Students also work online with mentors to help manage their time and course work, she said.

For more on this story, see The Chronicle of Higher Education.com