When Oregon State University launched the nation's first online fisheries and wildlife bachelor's degree in 2009, administrators were unsure of just what the response from students would be.
They have quickly found out.
In the past two years, skyrocketing interest in the degree has more than doubled the undergraduate student enrollment in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, and now the program is about to launch a new online professional science master's degree in the spring.
These online degree-seekers aren't your typical students, according to Dan Edge, who chairs the department. They are on average nine years older than other OSU students, 40 percent already have one college degree, and 20 percent are employed by a natural resources agency.
"It is all about access," Edge said. "Many of our students are place-bound or situation-bound because of jobs and family, and simply cannot move to campus from another community and become a full-time student. And increasingly, students are becoming more interested in learning online. So we've tailored a degree program for them."
Since offering the degree, the OSU department has grown from 265 mostly on-campus students to more than 600 students enrolled in on-campus and online degree programs, with many additional students declaring fisheries and wildlife as a minor and taking classes part-time. Selina Heppell, a fisheries ecologist who coordinates the online programs for the department, said the online degree is designed to get students away from the computer and out into the field.
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