"I hope we have laid the foundation of an institution which shall combine practical with liberal education, which shall fit the youth of our country for the professions, the farms, the mines, the manufactories, for the investigations of science, and for mastering all the practical questions of life with success and honor," Cornell said at the ceremony. "I believe that we have made the beginning of an institution which will prove highly beneficial to the poor young men and the poor young women of our country."

The repeated use of the word "practical" was deliberate, says Peter L. Jackson, director of the Systems Engineering Program at Cornell University. The "practical arts" have held a certain recognition since the birth of the institution.

ORIE Assistant Professor Huseyin Topaloglu teaches Systems Engineering 520 to students in Ives Hall and in Lockheed Martin’s remote classroom in Owego, N.Y. University Photo

They do now.

Starting this fall, working professionals have an opportunity to earn an Ivy League master’s degree without quitting their day job or relocating to Ithaca.

Pending approval from the state of New York, the university plans to matriculate the first students in the program this summer. The new distance-learning degree is in keeping with Ezra Cornell’s egalitarian ideal, but it is also a response to corporate interest.

"We had GM approach us. We had Xerox approach us. We had Applied Materials approach us," Jackson said during an interview at his office in Rhodes Hall. "I conceived of a more mature audience for this program from the beginning."

In fact, Systems Engineering had approximately 200 inquiries on file a year ago.

The Systems Engineering Program has used distance learning in some form since it was established in 1998, starting with a single course and growing to include remote classrooms at Lockheed Martin Corp. in Owego and Syracuse, as well as offerings for practicing engineers across the state. But until now, distance-learning students could only earn certificates.

"We’ve had distance-learning courses from early on but we were nowhere near being able to offer a degree until the recent addition of several online classes," Jackson said.

Jackson said the faculty have learned much from providing distance learning over the past decade. From an administrative standpoint, the instructors coordinate the same homework and the same schedule for students, regardless of whether they are in a classroom on campus or in a classroom at a remote location. "We’re very pleased with the technology," he said.

One systems engineering M.Eng. student who knew there was a good chance he might get called away from Ithaca has already made good use of the distance-learning technology. Before he was deployed last year to Iraq, U.S. Navy Lt. Matthew Zarracina, an instructor in the Cornell Reserve Officers Training Corps, arranged to continue his studies. He attends class via Web-streamed video lectures and continues to interact with professors and his adviser when he’s not working in the Green Zone and around Iraq.

"It was important for me to find a quality graduate school program," Zarracina said in a telephone interview from Baghdad. "The distance-learning appealed to me because I knew there was an opportunity I’d be forward-deployed."

Students in the new program won’t do all their learning from afar. To ensure they get some face time with faculty—and each other—it begins with a one-week summer course that gives students a chance to work together on their team projects. Another one-week summer course is taken later in the program, after students have completed the core requirements, and prepares the students for creative leadership of systems engineering projects.

The new distance-learning accounts for the usual forces of supply and demand and it considers the unusual logistics that come with a fast-paced business world. Students, whether from Upstate or from Baghdad, have a new opportunity to master "all the practical questions of life with success and honor."

Going the Distance

Students trickle into the classroom at Ives Hall on a gray morning in February. The course is Systems Engineering 520: Systems Architecture, Behavior, and Optimization. Professor Huseyin Topaloglu, the instructor, enters and the class begins promptly at its 10:10 a.m. start time. Two large screens show another group of students, about 10 of them, scribbling in notebooks or pecking away on laptops. The students are in Owego, a remote classroom for employees at Lockheed Martin Corp. Topaloglu jumps right into the day’s lesson plan for the master’s level course.

He works through numerous equations on an overhead projector, stopping occasionally to ask questions of his class. Students in Owego can interact with their professor, though the video connection has about a one-second delay.

Topaloglu runs through a few samples of random variables. "I’d like to generate samples of this random variable," Topaloglu says, "How would I do so?"

It looks and sounds very much like a traditional classroom. As the class ends at 11:30 a.m., the screens showing the remote class roll silently up and students in both locations make final notations and then depart. At Ives Hall, three students approach the professor at the front of the class and ask follow-up questions. Topaloglu turns to a chalk board to demonstrate an equation.

Topaloglu said the distance-learning programming is also helpful for students traveling or away on personal or professional business. "As soon as I go back to my office, the lecture’s on the Internet," he said.

Lockheed Martin students, shown on the large screen, can interact with the class in real time.   University Photo

There can be a small learning curve for professors using the technology. Mason A. Peck, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, notes he tends to move around the classroom a lot while lecturing. When he teaches a distance-learning course, however, he has to remember to stay still so the camera can keep him in view. He says he must also remember to gesture with the mouse on the computer, rather than to wave his hands at the screen or the board behind him, so as to include the students in a remote classroom who are learning in real time.

"I make a concerted effort to look at the camera and to ask them pointed questions to encourage class participation," Peck said in an e-mail. "When an instructor gets used to it, it’s not much of a burden; but there is definitely some adjustment of one’s style that comes with teaching a DL class. In the case of my class, the DL students add a lot. They bring professional experience and anecdotes, which generally help confirm the principles of systems engineering that the class is studying."

Working professionals say distance learning allows them to make the most of their day job and their studies. Michael Baldwin and Jessica Scofield, who are in their third and final year in the Engineering Leadership Development Program offered at Lockheed Martin, cite convenience as a major benefit.

"It is always tough taking time out of your normal workday to attend a class, but even tougher if you have to drive to campus to do it," Scofield says, by way of e-mail. Baldwin adds that it takes 45 minutes to travel from Owego to Ithaca on a good day, and sometimes much longer in winter.

Both students said their M.Eng. studies have already helped them at work. "My role at Lockheed is a systems engineer and therefore, the concepts learned through classes taken at Cornell are directly applicable to my day-to-day work," said Scofield, who received an undergraduate degree at Messiah College in Grantham, Pa., in 2005.

"Although my other degrees have helped me with my career, the degree I am getting in systems engineering from Cornell is very closely tied to what I do on a day-to-day basis at Lockheed," Baldwin said in an e-mail. He received degrees in aerospace engineering and mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan in 2003, and has a master’s degree from Georgia Tech.

"I also find that I have been able to apply some of my college experiences, especially those involving group projects, to my work at Lockheed," he says. "Another reason for getting this degree is the challenge of it. Cornell is known as a very challenging school academically for any student and I wanted to see how I would do there."

Baldwin and Scofield cited a lack of personal interaction with professors and other students as a challenge. "That being said," Baldwin notes, "all the Cornell professors I have answered questions over the phone and through e-mail instead of making me attend office hours."

Degree Requirements

The Systems Engineering Distance Learning Degree Program requires 30 credit hours of instruction, with students completing the same set of core courses as on-campus students. Seven 3-credit courses are taught using distance-learning technology. Completing a project supervised by Cornell faculty earns 7 credits. And the week-long summer courses are 1 credit each.

The basic admission criteria are the same. At a minimum, students must have a baccalaureate degree in engineering, mathematics, or science, conferred by an accredited college or university. Additional selection criteria apply for enrollment in the distance-learning degree program. In particular, applicants must document at least one year of work experience in a relevant field to be eligible to enroll in the distance-learning degree program. Administrators further reserve the right to restrict enrollments based on capacity, geographical location of the student, and the technical or administrative capability of the program.

Students in the distance-learning degree program pay tuition on a per-credit hour basis and must be enrolled for a minimum of 3 credit hours per regular semester.

Students in the distance-learning degree program are charged tuition at a College of Engineering special program rate. For the 2007–08 year, that rate would have been $1,442 per credit hour.

There may also be an on-site coordinator, paid by the student’s employer, who acts as a proctor. In the event there is no site coordinator, the student is required to designate a proctor. Exams for off-campus students are scheduled to occur within 24 hours of the on-campus exam, typically during local business hours on the same day as the on-
campus exam.

While the on-campus program for the master’s degree is growing steadily, Jackson anticipates small but steady growth for distance-learning students. The distance learning degree, too, will benefit from Cornell’s name and reputation.

"Cornell has a special appeal and we have a very interesting curriculum," Jackson said. "The strongest
interest we’ve seen for systems engineering is from working professionals."