Hien X. Cao is one of a growing population of international students who, despite living and working an ocean away, manages to work toward earning a graduate degree from the Rochester Institute of Technology’s Online Learning program.

Cao, who is a native of South Vietnam, lives in Geneva, Switzerland with his U.S. Air-Force-Officer wife and their one-year-old daughter. Cao works for a Swiss banking software company as a specialist in portfolio management, and he is studying at RIT for his master of science in applied statistics.

Previous to enrolling in the RIT Online Learning program Cao spent much of his leisure time playing cello with the local philharmonic orchestra. Now, he says, his leisure is taken up with "nothing but RIT."

Offered by the Kate Gleason College of Engineering through the John D. Hromi Center for Quality and Applied Statistics, the demanding program provides instruction in state-of-the-art statistical thinking and methods.

Cao says that after reading numerous "theoretical" books on such topics as statistical software for experimenting and computerized decision-making tools, he "came to the conclusion that a more systematic way to build knowledge in the field was definitely what I needed. Although statistics was part of many continuing education programs available to me, none had the content I was looking for until I discovered RIT," which "really made the difference."

Cao adds that he was impressed by RIT’s online presentation of its courses, philosophy on distance learning, faculty and online library resources. After communicating with the program’s advisor, Professor Thomas Barker, on and off for 12 months, he made the decision to enroll. "I had many questions about the day-to-day life on an online student," he says. "He (Barker) introduced me to another student from Europe. I also asked questions in order to judge how motivated a distance learning student should be."

Cao explains that he began an organized system for studying online by first setting up a study room in his home with a fast communication line, two PC’s to back up each other, and a video player. He also had to think about his parenting responsibilities. Consequently, when he’s on babysitting duty, his one-year-old owns a corner of the study where there’s a sofa so "she can fall asleep while I keep studying," which is customarily from after dinner until midnight or 2 a.m. on weekdays. Plus, "the PC runs non-stop during the week-ends," he adds. "The 20 minutes I spend on the bus to go to work is the time I ready the chat archive and other documents. I also travel by train whenever possible to have time for studying." He works out at the gym or goes swimming during lunch hours, and "all other things are kept to the minimum necessary or tolerable," with family vacations scheduled between quarters and break times at RIT.

All the hard work seems to have paid off as Cao says, in true statistician form, that studying applied statistics at RIT is allowing him to learn about how quality can "be implemented in a project-by-project logic" inside his job. "Projects such as decision evaluation or performance comparison are parts of a larger quality investment information management system." For Cao, "this is the primary field for applied statistics."

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