To paraphrase Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computers, it’s impossible to connect the dots looking forward, but it is very clear to connect the dots looking backwards. This statement holds true for FHSU in terms of how its institutional infrastructure was developed over the last 14 years in order to adequately prepare for the expansion of its bachelor of general studies (BGS) program into China.

When Cindy Elliott was hired in 1998 (see cover story), FHSU President Edward H. Hammond announced that his vision for the future included a spike in FHSU’s Virtual College enrollments (from 600 students in 1998 to 5,000 students by 2002 when the university turned 100 years old) and a slight decline in on-campus enrollments (from 5,600 in 1998 to 5,000 in 2002). "I thought I was being set up for failure," says Elliott. "I knew we could not get those kinds of numbers in our Virtual College from Western Kansas, so we began to strategically think about what partners we could work with."

The infrastructure-building at FHSU, however, was setting Elliott up for success (today the Virtual College has 5,000 students and the on-campus population is near 5,000), going back to 1991 when Larry Gould was Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Gould, who in 1998 was appointed FHSU’s Provost after spending 17 years at the university, and then Assistant Dean Lou Caplan, spearheaded the growth of what was, at that time, an under-utilized BGS program by building in pre-produced and locally-developed telecourses, thereby offering the program in a distance education modality. "It was pretty clear to me at that time that distance education was certainly the Third Wave in terms of where education in the U.S. was going," says Gould. "The College of Arts and Sciences experienced tremendous growth, and by 1998 it was the leading college in the university delivering distance education courses."

In 1993, the infrastructure building took another step forward with the creation of FHSU’s Center for Teaching Excellence and Learning Technology (CTELT) (www.fhsu.edu/ctelt). CTELT is where faculty get the instructional design and delivery support they need for both synchronous and asynchronous distance education courses. "Having CTELT in place early on has helped position us for success domestically and in the international realm," says Gould.

Basically, the early 90s at FHSU reveal an emerging culture that was accepting of distance education. At the same time, the formula for faculty compensation for teaching distance education courses was also being revamped. Faculty pay for overload courses has increased from $600 per course since the early 90s to between $2,200 and $3,000 per course today, and up to $5,300 per course in the College of Business and Leadership. "We have reached a point and time where the overloads provided to our faculty have become not only an expectation but almost a necessity to a point where people are not taking jobs at other institutions," Gould says.

Gould points to a number of additional factors that, early on, helped push FHSU into the international realm, such as:

• Adopting a mission-centered and market-smart strategy based on Bob Zemsky’s research.
   
• Developing support operations and risk-taking entrepreneurship based on the predictions professed in "Transforming Higher Education: A Vision for Learning in the 21st Century" by Michael G. Dolence and Donald M. Norris, published by the Society for College and University Planning in 1995.
   
• Taking a "go-slow-to-go-fast" approach to global expansion efforts. In other words, building ongoing effective international partnerships is an iterative process that takes time.
   
• Understanding and closely following how global events and developments have and are impacting international initiatives.
   
• Having a business model and academic model that makes sense and is not impulsive. These models, combined, "have to remain consistent with your educational offerings and your institutional purpose," says Gould. "If you try to begin an initiative that is inconsistent with your mission and vision to simply earn revenue, or try to make the project a completely independent operation, it won’t work - not if you are a traditional institution of higher education."
   
• Agility and flexibility also come into play. For instance, FHSU, in cooperation with its academic officers, suspended the TOEFL requirement for the first 40 students in the SIAS program to get things started. "If we had not done this, the program would have never gotten off the ground," says Gould. "Since this was a distance education environment, we felt we could bear any language weaknesses a little longer than what you might find in a face-to-face classroom."

Elliott explains that FHSU was also nimble enough to take a risk to get the SIAS partnership off the ground. "There were a lot of hoops to go through," she says, "including, in addition to the approval by the Chinese government and the blessing of the Kansas Board of Regents, an element of trust also came into play, especially when dealing with such a remote and far-away place as the Henan province." All of FHSU’s faculty credentials, course syllabi, textbooks, etc. had to be initially pre-reviewed by Chinese government officials and educators and all were accepted without question.

Gould adds that he was emotionally moved when he attended the first SIAS graduating ceremony in 2002, which was modeled after a typical U.S. university commencement, which Elliott helped design. "When I drove up to the SIAS campus and saw the American flag and Chinese flag side by side, tears just about came to my eyes. As a former international relations instructor, never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that I would be part of two universities that had partnered - one from Communist China and the other from the U.S. - to deliver education to this part of the world."

The dots were connected.

"You’ve got to find what you love,’ Jobs says," Stanford Report, June 14, 2005.
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html