Burks Oakley III
Sloan-C Vice-President, is Scholar in Residence at the Center for Online Learning, Research and Service (COLRS) and a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). From 1997 until 2007, Oakley was the Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of Illinois. In that capacity, he served as the founding director of the University of Illinois Online initiative, a program designed to facilitate the development and delivery of University of Illinois courses and degrees over the Internet.
Through his innovative use of educational technologies and the Internet in teaching, Professor Oakley has earned a national reputation as a practitioner and promoter of online learning. In the past six years, he has given more than two hundred invited talks at national conferences and on university campuses. He has been the principal investigator (PI) or co-PI on over $10 million in grants (including matching funds) to the University of Illinois in support of online educational initiatives.
Oakley received his B.S. degree from Northwestern University and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan. He has received numerous awards for his teaching and for his innovative use of technology in education, including the Luckman Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award from UIUC in 1993, the Outstanding Teacher Award from the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) in 1993, the Educom Medal in 1996, the Educational Activities Board Major Educational Innovation Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 1996, the Third Millennium Medal from the IEEE in 2000, the Engineering Alumni Society Merit Award from the University of Michigan in 2003, and the Sloan-C Award for the “Most Outstanding Achievement in Online Teaching and Learning by an Individual” in 2003. Oakley is a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the ASEE, and a former Vice President of the ASEE.
Ray Schroeder
Ray Schroeder is Professor Emeritus of Communication and founding director of the Center for Online Learning, Research, and Service at the University of Illinois at Springfield. Schroeder has numerous national presentations and publications in online and technology-enhanced learning. Ray has published the popular Online Learning Update and Educational Technology blogs for the past decade. He was a Sloan Consortium Distinguished Scholar in Online Learning 2002-2003, recipient of the 2002 Sloan-C award for the "Most Outstanding Achievement in ALN by an Individual," University of Southern Maine "Visiting Scholar in Online Learning" 2006-2009, and co-founder of the New Century Learning Consortium. Most recently, Ray was named the inaugural recipient of the Sloan Cnosortium's highest inidividual award - the A. Frank Mayadas Leadership Award. Schroeder was also named an inaugural Sloan Consortium Fellow.