By Colter Hettich, Features Editor

It is never too late to finish your degree, thanks to ACUonline.

This semester, students have more online degree options than ever. The program now offers eight master’s degrees, a graduate certificate and a bachelor’s degree-completion
program with seven areas of emphasis.

Students must be a nonresident and have 60 credit hours upon entering the program. Because of its nature, an ACUonline degree doesn’t match a traditional Bachelor of Arts coursefor- course.

Carol Williams, dean of the Graduate School and associate provost of distance education, knows a little about her target demographic.

“ACU online is aimed at those who cannot come to our campus for whatever reason,” Williams said. So professors on campus, teamed with media specialists and course designers, have tailored each of the seven-week courses with the student in mind.

“We involve as many kinds of multimedia as we can,” Williams said. “We even provide a video iPod for each student to use with iTunesU.”

Past students have written papers together, discussed assigned films and have even watched scripted vignettes performed by their professors.

“You are not alone; they are highly interactive, schedule-paced courses,” Williams said.

Williams sees the growing demand for online, degree completion programs and wants ACU to lead the pack.

“The biggest pool of potential, online students is adults wanting to complete their degrees,” Williams said. “Adults are turning to the Internet more and more for education.”

Though the program inherently loses some interpersonal aspects of a classroom, “there are advantages to not seeing the other person,” Williams said. “An older person is less likely to be intimidated, and it is much more difficult to approach someone with preconceived notions based on age, race, gender or ethnicity.”

Though the program has expanded significantly, no changes or additions will be made to the staff or the campus.

ACU has partnered with Embanet Unlimited Corporation to provide these new opportunities.

“Embanet is an expert in Web marketing,” Williams said. “They bring the online marketing expertise that we haven’t fully developed yet.” Williams compares Embanet’s role in the program to a wedding planner.

“It’s still our wedding; we choose the time, place, date, etc. They just take care of a lot of the details,” she said.

Embanet oversees hosting, tech support and marketing, which includes brochures, email blasts, publication advertisements and the like.

Partnered with Embanet, ACU hopes to provide a unique, online program that will allow people from all over the world to obtain a high quality, Christian education.

-Online Offerings-

New online options equip students to finish their degrees
over the Internet with the help of video iPods and iTunesU.

Programs include:

Emphasis In:

* Family and Community Services
* Gerontology
* Human and Professional Administration
* Informational Technology Services and Administration
* Liberal Arts
* Sociology
* Sociology/Criminal Justice

Master’s:
* Reading Specialist, Master’s of Education
* Special Education, Master’s of Education
* Higher Education, Master’s of Education
* Organizational and Human Resource Development Master’s