What do trunks full of books, scholastic competitions and petroleum engineering manuals have in widespread?
There’s no punchline; this stuff are all a part of The College of Texas at Austin’s Prolonged Campus (EC), which has been offering instructional applications for learners throughout Texas and past for over a century.
Since June 1909, EC has offered providers, shared assets and modern studying experiences associated to persevering with {and professional} education schemes provided on and off campus. All through the twentieth century, as technological and financial development modified the world, EC developed with it.Within the early 1900s, distance schooling outreach was based mostly on bodily bringing instructional assets to distant elements of Texas through cell libraries, educational competitions {and professional} coaching performed within the area.
The Package deal Mortgage Library — a really early model of a cell library began in 1909 — offered literary assets to rural corners of Texas the place native libraries didn’t exist or the place public faculties didn’t have sufficient informational assets on present occasions like girl’s suffrage, prohibition, the state’s penitentiary system and youngster labor. Accessing these matters typically meant transport books in trunks earlier than vehicular libraries had been obtainable.
The College Interscholastic League (UIL) was based by Prolonged Campus in 1910 to encourage college students to realize management, skill-building and collaboration expertise via arts, sports activities and educational competitions. It stands as the biggest interschool group of its variety on this planet.
Petroleum Extension (PETEX) was based in 1944 in partnership with UT’s engineering faculty to offer sensible, distance schooling and specialised coaching for Texans working in oil and fuel manufacturing.
Immediately, with satellite tv for pc coaching facilities positioned in Houston and Odessa, PETEX now gives each conventional instructor-led classroom programs and on-line programs to skilled college students within the oil and fuel trade all over the world.
“With modernization and the evolving wants of learners, particularly round technological change within the office, issues could look completely different immediately than when Prolonged Campus first began, however our dedication to schooling and enthusiasm for sharing the assets of a top-tier college with the world are as robust as ever,” stated Artwork Markman, Vice Provost for Tutorial Affairs.
Now, as EC celebrates its one hundred and fifteenth anniversary, its applications have modernized to succeed in professionals who’re in search of to additional their schooling and careers, from these working in nonprofits to army personnel. In 2021, EC launched its program finder, an internet catalog of greater than 200 levels, skilled certificates applications, persevering with schooling credit and workshops from applications throughout UT Austin.
EC additionally helps skilled schooling college students in Texas via scholarships. The Street to Success Scholarship Program, a need-based scholarship for a number of of the Heart for Skilled Training’s certificates applications, has offered greater than $568,000 in help since 2020.
In current a long time, EC moved educational credit score choices for highschool and school college students on-line. The UT Excessive College District is an accredited, public on-line highschool district providing each a full on-line highschool diploma program and particular person programs or credit score by examination. The College Extension (UEX) program’s night courses and correspondence programs of the Nineties are actually on-line programs taken by college students all over the world to earn educational credit score from UT Austin.
In 2011, EC helped launch the OnRamps program, a signature dual-credit enrollment initiative, for The College of Texas at Austin. EC, via UEX, has performed a big position in supporting OnRamps’ mission of accelerating postsecondary schooling entry, readiness and attainment for 1000’s of highschool college students throughout Texas yearly.
Along with boosting entry to a UT schooling, EC has applications geared toward serving to nonprofits enhance their effectiveness via related instructional programs. Based by distinguished UT alumnus Peyton Yates Jr., the PY Basis connects UT Austin school to nonprofits in Artesia, New Mexico, for year-round bootcamps that embrace matters on growing a robust board of administrators, basic operations and enterprise finest practices. Course catalogs are developed yearly based mostly on want and demand.
“Prolonged Campus has all the time been a optimistic affect in instructing and studying,” Markman stated. “It began with books shipped throughout Texas and, now, we have now a UT-quality schooling on the fingertips of scholars and professionals across the globe. We sit up for our future and persevering with to develop the attain of continued schooling.”
With over 100 years below its belt, EC has all the time labored to develop its program choices and continues to have thrilling additions within the coming years. Within the upcoming 2024–25 12 months, it should help the Jackson College of Geosciences in delivering an on-demand persevering with schooling course to coach geoscience professionals in carbon seize. EC can be serving to the School of Liberal Arts launch an initiative to offer on-line entry to the school’s big selection of language programs, together with many lesser-spoken languages, to learners all over the place.
This summer time, Prolonged Campus is sponsoring the June 30 celebration commemorating the Texas Longhorns’ transfer to the Southeastern Convention, and can have a presence on the South Mall with representatives obtainable to talk with folks concerned about EC applications.
