Dr. Peter Shea is an Associate Professor in the School of Education and the College of Computing and Information at the University at Albany, State University of New York.  His research focuses on the development of communities dedicated to learning in online environments.  He has published widely on this topic in journals such as Computers and Education, JALN, Internet and Higher Education, The Journal of Educational Computing Research, Interactive Learning Environments and others. He is past director of the SUNY Learning Network, the online education enterprise of the 64 campus and 400,000 students in the SUNY system. Peter is currently a principal investigator on two grants examining the uses of online networks in education. The Student-to-Student Online Language Laboratory, funded by the US Department of Education investigates the use of online media to help K-12 students to learn Chinese. Through the SUNY Learning Network Research Project Dr. Shea inquires into the experiences of thousands of students and faculty in the fully online learning environment of the State University of New York.   He is a Sloan-C Fellow, member of the Sloan-C Board of Directors, and has been a co-recipient of three national awards for online learning, faculty development and online programs from EDUCAUSE and the Sloan Consortium.