Hello. My name is Chris Foley. And as the Associate Vice President for IU online, it's my pleasure to welcome you to the ninth annual IU online Conference. As always, it's a highlight of the year for me. It's time for us to focus on the great things that our campus communities are doing in the online educational space and set the stage for the upcoming year. This past year has been phenomenal, and I expect 2025 will be even better. To me, this year's theme, a united path forward emphasizes the possibilities of this future. As we put the pandemic further into the rear view mirror, it's exciting to focus on the opportunities the future presents to us and our ability to reach new students in new ways with new programs. But I also want to emphasize that it's not just about keeping the forward momentum going. But doing so by going down a united path. IU's approach is built around partnerships. But just as the adage says, if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together. IU has certainly engaged in an approach to online education that avoids competition, allows campuses to participate, and encourages building on each other strengths. While this is not always easy and sometimes requires extra time, in the end, we've avoided the pitfalls that many of our peers have encountered. And we've come far, indeed. With 9,362 students and online programs this fall, and more than 50% of our students taking online courses. IU is now in the top 50 institutions in the United States in terms of enrolling students and completely online schedules, which is the PEDs definition used to track enrollments. That puts us in the top 2% of institutions in the United States. But when looking at our home state, we are the largest four year online educator of Indiana students. Only IV Tech has more Hosiers and fully online schedules. We educate students at all of Indiana's 92 counties. With online education, we bring the excellence of Indiana University to them and in turn to their communities. Think about that. With online education, we are bringing an IU education to every corner of Indiana. But we also bring IU to every state in the United States, as well as 50 other countries through online education. We have indeed come far in a very short time. We are increasingly doing this together, not just between campuses and IU online, but also between the campuses, schools, and departments themselves. We're not done. 2024 was a great year for online education at Indiana University. As I've already mentioned, we saw record enrollments in online education. We successfully partnered with faculty and e learning Design and services and UITS to design or redesign 200 courses. Alongside University Communications and Marketing, we launched a national campaign to grow awareness of IU online as a provider of a world class online education. We worked with academic programs and centers like the IU School of Optometry and the Eple Institute to develop online professional and continuing education opportunities through IU Expand to serve thousands of professionals. We even combined and renamed our offices from the Office of Online Education and the Office of Collaborative Academic Programs to simply IU online. All of this work is getting noticed. Not only do IU online programs continue to receive top marks in national rankings like US News and World Report, but the work IU has done in online education has been nationally recognized with awards from PSIA and Edge of Ventures. It's more than appropriate to take a day and share more of the good things happening at IU and online education with each other. Alongside the IU online team, we're excited to have faculty and staff from IU campuses presenting their experiences and successes in online education. Together, we'll share information about where online education is going at IU. But also, we'll talk about the faculty management of online collaborative programs, microcredentials, and badging, quality matters, supporting student success, and more. Of course, Vice President Awama, who joined us this summer, will kick off the day with a conversation about his vision for I U online. Join us for a day of focus and knowledge sharing about this great endeavor. I look forward to seeing you there.
