The Inaugural Ralph E. Gomory Award for Quality Online Education will be presented by the Sloan Consortium to an institution that has demonstrated its commitment to assessing and improving the quality of its online education programs through quantitative application of the Sloan-C Quality Pillars. The five interdependent pillars, upon which quality online education is based, are:

• Access
• Learning Effectiveness
• Cost Effectiveness
• Student Satisfaction
• Faculty Satisfaction

The Sloan-C Quality Pillars parallel the familiar principles of continuous quality improvement, in which quantitative metrics are used to improve products and processes. For more information about the Sloan-C Pillars, see: http://www.sloanconsortium.org/publications/books/qualityframework.pdf.

Since 2002, Sloan-C has presented annual to recognize outstanding effective practices in each of the pillar areas. The new Gomory Award for Quality Online Education will be presented to an institution that best demonstrates, in a quantitative manner, its commitment to continuous improvement of the quality of its online programs using the Sloan-C Pillars. The award will be based upon the innovative nature of the quantitative metrics being used to assess quality, as well as the demonstration of continuous quality improvement based upon these metrics. In the first year only, institutions with plans to introduce quantitative metrics into the assessment of the quality of their online programs may apply for the Gomory Award, although institutions that have actually implemented such assessments will receive preference in the selection process.

Institutions may apply for the Gomory Award based upon a single degree program, a cluster of such programs within a department or a school, or the online degree offerings for the entire institution. However, each institution will be limited to a single application.

The Sloan-C Board of Directors will review the Gomory Award periodically, to determine how often this award will be presented. The Sloan-C Selection Committee may decide to award up to two Gomory in 2008.

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS

SUBMISSION AND DUE DATE - All nominations must be submitted online by August 15, 2008.  The submission form is available at: Closed

The Selection Committee of the Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C) invites nominations for the inaugural Ralph E. Gomory Award for Quality Online Education. The inaugural award will be presented during the Sloan-C Banquet at the Fourteenth International Conference on Online Learning in Orlando, Florida, on November 5, 2008. This award consists of a commemorative plaque and a check for $5000. The monetary award is to be used by the recipient institution to fund "Sloan-C Gomory Scholarships" to students enrolled in its online programs.

Nominations must include (1) an overall summary of the institution’s online program, highlighting key measures of quality and emphasizing the quantitative metrics used to measure program quality, (2) a detailed description of the how the institution has used quantitative data in each of the five pillar areas to assess and to improve the quality of its online teaching and learning programs, (3) a proposed award citation, and (4) up to five letters of support, including letters from at least one student, one faculty member, and one administrator.

2008 Sloan-C Selection Committee

• Meg Benke, Director of the Center for Distance Learning, SUNY Empire State College (recipient of the 2007 Sloan-C Award for Most Outstanding Achievement in Online Teaching Learning by an Individual)
• Charles Dziuban, Professor and Director of the Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness, University of Central Florida (recipient of the 2005 Sloan-C Award for Most Outstanding Achievement in Online Teaching Learning by an Individual)
• Judith S. Eaton, President, Council for Higher Education Accreditation
• Carmen Gonzales, Vice Provost, New Mexico State University
• John V. Lombardi, President, Louisiana State University System
• Melvin Johnson, President, Tennessee State University
• Sylvia Manning, President-Elect, Higher Learning Commission
• Michelle Pacansky-Brock, Professor, Sierra College (recipient of the 2007 Sloan-C Award for Excellence in Online Teaching)
• Stella Perez, Vice-President of Operations and Technology Programs, League for Innovation in the Community College
• Thomas Ramage, President, Parkland College
• Karen Swan, Research Professor in the Research Center for Educational Technology at Kent State University (recipient of the 2006 Sloan-C Award for Most Outstanding Achievement in Online Teaching Learning by an Individual)
• Burks Oakley II, Visiting Research Professor, University of Illinois at Springfield, non-voting committee chair

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About Ralph E. Gomory

Ralph E. Gomory became the President of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in 1989 after a long and distinguished career at IBM. During his tenure as President, he led the Sloan Foundation into numerous fields relevant to major national issues. The Foundation supported pioneering work in the field of online learning before there was even a public Internet, and then supported its growth so that by 2007, more than 3.5 million people were enrolled annually in online courses in higher education in the United States. He was instrumental in the conception of the Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C). In December 2007, Gomory became President Emeritus of the Sloan Foundation. More information about Dr. Gomory is available at:

http://www.sloan.org/bios/gomory.shtml