Greetings from the Gulf

In an effort to keep our Alumni and students informed of what is happening at CSU, the University is beginning a bi-monthly Newsletter, THE CSU COMMUNICATOR.  If you have any news or information that you wish to have presented to the University Community, please contact Dr. Joe Wilkins, Vice President of University Advancement via email or 1-800-977-8449,ext. 160.

What is happening at CSU
/ The News in Brief:

• CSU reaccredited by DETC (Distance Education Training Council) for another five years.
• Doctorate of Business approved by DETC.
• The Student forum has been recently updated and made more secure.  Take this opportunity to communicate with your fellow alumni—the Alumni forum is designed for you.
• CSU’s web site has been totally redesigned.  Take an opportunity to look over the newly designed web site. Let us know what you think.
• Online delivery has been improved by the recent enhancement of Blackboard to provide more options for online delivery of courses and content.
• Vice President of Partner Development, Chantell Cooley, has been hard at work increasing the number of CSU partnerships.  New partnerships have been created with police, fire, county government departments, and corporations providing employees with a 10% discount on CSU tuition.  See all CSU Learning Partners.

From the President

This past year was a time of improvement and growth for the University. In March, the DETC completed its onsite re-accreditation review. Shortly afterwards, CSU received a near perfect report and was re-accredited.

CSU added many staff and faculty in 2006. This provided increases in services to students in all departments. The number of Education Representatives continues to increase and give CSU greater representation at major conferences and military/corporate Education Fairs. If there is a conference in your industry where you believe CSU should have a presence, please, contact Rick Cooper, Director of Corporate/Military Programs, at rick@columbiasouthern.edu.

As you will learn in following articles, many corporation/municipalities joined the CSU Learning Partnership program in 2006. Included are Eighteen Fire Departments resulting in a total of 27 Fire related partners; Eight Police departments bringing that total to twelve; and eight corporation/municipalities which now number 14. Overall, CSU has a total of 53 Learning Partners. CSU remains very proud to be partners with Delta Air Lines and Boeing Corporation. Last year CSU became the 2nd most popular University chosen by Delta Air Lines employees. Only the Aeronautical University, Embry Riddle, surpassed CSU.  

CSU proudly conducted its annual Graduation Ceremonies in June. More than 100 students and 300 guests participated in CSU’s largest graduation ever. Graduates from more than 30 states, Hong Kong, China, Vietnam and Germany were in attendance. The number of graduates also was at an all time high, as in 2006, more than 900 students completed their programs and were issued diplomas. If you are a CSU graduate nearing the completion of your program, I encourage you to attend the 2007 Ceremonies which will be held in Orange Beach on June 29th.Complete information will be released and found on the CSU Web site in the very near future.

The change, growth, and improvement that CSU experienced in 2006 will not only continue, but will expand in 2007. Soon, the majority of CSU courses will be updated to a new design that will better serve and engage our students. The new design will allow students to better progress through the courses unit by unit.

CSU is at the final stages of signing an agreement to purchase a large track of land near the current location. It is expected that construction on CSU’s new administration building will begin prior to the end of the year. With additional land available, I am excited about CSU’s future and the evolvement of CSU’s new Campus.

At CSU, we know our foundation is built on serving our students and you can be assured our level of personalized service will only improve. There are increasingly large numbers of universities where our students can select to complete their degree. We are proud you chose CSU.

Sincerely,
Robert Mayes, Jr.
President

Letter from CSU Alumni President —
Jamie Gauthier

Distinguished Alumni,

Many exciting changes are taking place with the alumni association and I wanted to provide you with a quick update of our progress. 

During the graduation ceremonies in June 2006, two new alumni officers were elected and were up to the challenge to help lead the alumni team.  The individuals are Chad Mills as Secretary and Anthony Snow as Treasurer.  You can read their biographies on the alumni website.

Since the inception of the Delta Epsilon Tau International Honor Society, more CSU graduates who are eligible have been joining this prestigious association.  The DET is the only honor society in the world to represent distance learning graduates.  I’ve communicated with Christopher Davis, President of DET Honor Society and we both agreed that a newly developed website would be beneficial to the honor society and it’s members.  So, I’m hopeful that in the near future you’ll see an interactive website for DET Honor Society members.  The DET Honor Society plans on adding hot links for the individual chapters on the DETC website.  I will keep you all updated as to this exciting endeavor.

As you are probably already aware, CSU just recently redesigned their website and with that, came a redesigned alumni association website.  I encourage all of you to visit the new website and keep checking back for updates:

http://www.colsouth.edu/alumni/index.asp

If you’d like to stay in communication with your alma mater after graduation and be an active member of the alumni association, you need to provide CSU with your most up to date contact information.  I’m providing you the link to update your information so that CSU and the alumni association can maintain contact with you into the future years

https://ssl.columbiasouthern.edu/forms/contact_info_update.htm

As I’ve encouraged many times in the past, we still need to recruit leaders to take charge and develop active alumni chapters.  The only States with alumni chapters are California, Texas and Oklahoma.  Our only international chapter is Hong Kong.  Please take into consideration in developing alumni chapters in States and/or Countries that have not already been implemented.  If you reside in the state or country that already has an alumni chapter, contact the local chapter representative and see how you can assist or become one of the leaders for that respective chapter.

CSU is currently looking for nominations, including self nominations, for the Distance Education & Training Council (DETC) National Outstanding Graduate Program.  All graduates and alumni are encouraged to participate and be taken in for consideration for this prestigious recognition.  You can learn more about the Outstanding Graduate Program by clicking on the link provided below:

http://www.detc.org/downloads/2005%20Outstanding%20Grad%20&%20Fam%20Alumni.pdf

We would like to “Spotlight” students and alumni each month in The CSU Communicator.  Please send us an article about yourself and why you decided to earn your degree through distance learning. Lets us know your accomplishments, promotions, or success stories. We know that your academic achievement as a graduate at CSU reflects upon your success in your professional and personal life. The aim of The CSU Communicator is to keep in touch with you and what is happening at CSU.

The strength of the CSU alumni association is based on the excellence and involvement of our alumni.  The administrators, faculty, staff and elected alumni officers encourage you to become more involved and informed about your alma mater.  Your active involvement is imperative to our success in developing a truly compelling online alumni community.

Respectfully Yours,

Jamie Gauthier, MBA
President, CSU Alumni Association (2005-2007)

Information on Certificate Transfer

Students who complete an Undergraduate/Graduate Certificate Program may transfer those courses into a degree program with the corresponding concentration.

Students enrolled in a degree program with a concentration, who also wish to earn a certificate, may transfer the concentration courses into the corresponding certificate program.  The fee for processing this transfer and certificate is $150.  To request this transfer, go to the “Degree to Certificate Transfer Request Form” located in the Student Center on the CSU website.

Students who request the transfer for a certificate program (four courses) may continue to complete the remaining three courses of the concentration and request an Advanced Certificate.  A separate “Degree to Certificate Transfer Request Form” must be submitted for the Advanced Certificate.

Students enrolled in a degree program are encouraged to add a certificate in a different area from their concentration.

The Online Library at CSU

The CSU Online Library provides students with a wealth of reference materials.  In addition to the volumes of information available through this Library, CSU Students and Faculty are supported by 24/7 professional Librarians. 

Check out the Columbia Southern Library today.  If you have forgotten the username and password required for the library, login to your Blackboard account and view Library Announcement.” When working on a paper or a project  assignment students should use the “Research Databases” link. CSU subscribes to six Proquest Database allowing students to quickly and easily search through thousands of articles that are not freely available on the web.

Another key component of the Library are the Electronic Books. Students can access and search through over 30,000 online text.

Faculty and Staff Highlights

The University is proud to spotlight the following staff and faculty.

Rachel Farris

Rachel Farris, Senior CSU Educational Representative, served in the United States Navy for over 12 years.  She was assigned as an Aviation Electrician during her first 10 years of enlisted service. She went on to earn a BA in Sociology from Auburn University, and later an MA in Organizational Management with a Graduate Certificate in Human Resource Management from the University of Phoenix Online. She received commissioning from Auburn University and served as the Weapons Officer at NAS Kingsville, TX.  Currently, she is a Lieutenant in the IRR.

Now as Senior Educational Representative, she travels to military bases promoting CSU programs.  “Having experienced both traditional and online learning,” Ms. Farris observes, “I am a proponent of distance education.  The ability to achieve my educational goals in a flexible, online format while meeting the demands of my military career has allowed me to develop professionally without sacrifice.  I would recommend online learning, such as CSU, to aspiring leaders that work full-time and have family responsibilities.” If you have questions feel free to contact Rachel via email.

Laurin Lee Lader

CSU Educational Representative, Laurin Lee Lader, retired from the United States Navy after a 30-year career.  Attending over 30 different schools throughout his career and finishing his career as the Officer in Charge of Navy Learning Site, Sigonella, Italy, Laurin has championed the e-learning concept needed to complete the Navy’s Leadership courses. Laurin notes that education is the corner stone in any service member’s career, and the Military provides for the service members’ education, during and after their careers.

Laurin has served as a Command Career Counselor, Chief of the Boat, Command Master Chief, and in all of those roles, he counseled sailors on the importance of education to their life and career. Now in his new role as a CSU Educational Representative, he is trying to reach service members in all branches of service, officer and enlisted alike.  He feels that education is the whetstone that sharpens a person’s character and career and only online education provides the flexibility and freedom to accomplish these goals and dreams.  Feel free to contact Laurin via email.

Dr. Alan Gleit, Harvard and Stanford Alumnus Contributes to CSU’s Instructional Quality

Dr. Alan Gleit, CSU faculty member, was born during World War II in New York City. He graduated from Harvard University in Boston and completed graduate school at Stanford University.  A National Science Foundation post-graduate award led him to the University of Massachusetts in Amherst as an Assistant Professor Of Mathematics.

His research for several years involved rather theoretical mathematics (functional analysis), but he became more and more interested in applied work. He decided that deterministic mathematical modeling of physical processes eliminated the fact that all measured quantities in the models were really unknown and could only be approximated.  This led naturally to probabilistic modeling, which he applied to problems in various areas of science and social science. After a year in Denmark, he signed his tenured professorship to begin life as an applied mathematician and statistician.

His next stop was the US Environmental Protection Agency.  A few years later, he joined Citicorp as a research vice-president studying interest rates and later dealt with risk management within the financial services industry.  He worked in the treasury area for several large international banks, ending his career about five years ago as senior vice-president (balance sheet manager) for a major regional bank.

For a couple of years, he developed a program in applied statistics at a small university, then retired “for real’ and moved to an oceanfront condo in Atlantic Beach, FL.  Now he pursues his teaching via the Internet for CSU in the areas of finance, mathematics, and statistics.  He also travels to Vietnam in CSU’s MBA program—this winter will be his fifth trip there.  He enjoys traveling and learning about other cultures.  He spends part of the afternoon each day at the gym and helps the local theater group.