 The University of Southern Maine is helping Maine adults complete their college degrees with four new online programs that will be available for the fall semester. Tom talked with Amartal Perman, the Associate Program Director for Continuing Education about what the new service has to offer. Thank you for joining us Amartal. It's great to have you here. This is a new program that you're starting at USM to get people to complete their degree online. Can people do it completely online? What's the program all about? Why did it come about? Well, they can absolutely do everything fully online. The idea behind these programs is that it's part of USM's effort to really reach out to the adult learner across the state of Maine. There are a lot of people out there with some college experience, maybe an associate's, maybe just a credit here, a credit there, and these programs are designed for them. They're fully online. There's five of them. There's a bachelor completion program in business administration with general management. There's the applied technical leadership program. There's a liberal studies program, a communication program, and a leadership and organizational studies program, as well as a certificate program in gerontology. So the five bachelor completion programs and the one certificate program in gerontology again are fully online and really designed with the busy working adult in mind. Now can people who can take a course or two at USM but can't take all the courses they want at USM sort of do some courses on campus and some courses online? Well, we find at USM that our student population, they're definitely not the traditional students. So we have people who definitely do that. We have people who take just one class here or there, some are online, some are on site. These programs are designed to say, if you have a question, we'll support you from inquiry all the way through graduation. So they are designed for someone to complete fully online. But of course, some people will want to take a class here or there on site. Maybe some of their core requirements, maybe they've already started at USM as a non-degree student is what we call them, someone who hasn't fully committed to an actual program but has stuck their toe in the water a little bit and tried a class out. So these programs may appeal to that kind of person. Why do you choose the five areas that you chose, are those the ones that lend themselves easiest to this form of education or are you looking eventually to expand and just starting with those? Well, we're definitely going to expand. I think the idea here is that people should be able to have access to quality education. The online format is one way of doing that and we definitely are committed to making sure they're fully high quality online programs. So we work with the faculty, we partner with them in all the departments across the university making sure everyone knows what a quality online course looks like, making it consistent. And these particular courses were courses that we really felt were strong programs within the university. For example, the business administration program, it's the exact same faculty and the exact same curriculum that an on-site student can receive. So now people who want to come to that fully accredited excellent program on site can do it online and then receive the same experience. So they have the flexibility but the same traditional resources as a student might get. If somebody, obviously if it's online, person could be anywhere and take this education. Are you looking to attract people that maybe are out of state, haven't even been in Maine or perhaps people who are already at USM that are moving out of state want to continue their USM education? Well, the first thing here was really to be responsive to state need. There are a lot of people in Maine who need online programming because they just can't fit there, they can't stop their life to go back to school full time on site like a traditional student. So that's really where it came out of. But yes, USM definitely looks across the nation and internationally to make sure that we're keeping up with what the industry is really doing and where higher ed is going and online is a big part of that and so our programs, of course, are welcoming to people from outside the state but really are developed in partnership with local need. I know that when I went to USM for my master's degree and went to family at another job and all that sort of stuff, at that time of course there wasn't online anything but it would have been great to have something like this. Is there a profile of a particular type of person that you know that single parents or any other group that you are looking to hope to get on here that has been getting the USM education? Well, I think the profile is a complicated one just like yourself. Someone who works full time, has a family, maybe in transition with careers you never know and I think that speaks to a lot of people in Maine. Our average age for these programs and for sort of the adult learner within University of Southern Maine is 35 but people who have full time careers, busy family life, range from early 20s all the way up 50s, 60s so lots of people identify with these programs. Some of the programs, actually two of the programs are offered in seven week models so this way they can be even more flexible, take a seven week session and then take some time off again, do a piece meal instead of multiple courses within a 15 week session so that even applies to more people. And where can people go for more information? Well they can absolutely go to our website at usm.main.edu slash online. They can also call our student services representatives at 780-5900 and they'll help you from inquiry all the way through graduation. Thanks so much for joining us. It's a very interesting program. Wonderful. Thank you.