After over two decades working in online education, Pam Wimbush has learned a thing or two.
For starters, many online learners need flexibility because they’re juggling college alongside parenthood and work. And others are looking to add skills to adapt to a changing world.
Wimbush, who joined University of Indianapolis in early February, will oversee the university’s online education programs.
These include UIndy Online, which offers a variety of online and hybrid undergraduate and graduate degrees, and the Sease Institute, which focuses on certificates and corporate training programs. The university hopes that adding these programs will make it easier for working adults to get their degrees or learn new skills.
Wimbush, who most recently worked at Sacramento State, has a personal tie to online and adult education. She went to college while raising her young daughter. As a nontraditional student herself, she knows what it takes to support adult learners.
“I feel like my own unique experiences having been an adult learner from the beginning to the end,” Wimbush said, “it brings out my passion for the work that I do.”
Here’s Mirror Indy’s conversation with Wimbush, edited for length and clarity.
On being an adult learner
Can you tell me a little bit more about your own educational journey, and how you feel that perspective contributes to your ability to engage with online and adult education?
I did not have the privilege of attending college immediately after high school. I was working while I was going to school, then I had my daughter. I was looking for flexibility, but I was also looking for quality as well.
I started out at our local university. They still had that traditional scheduling, and so it was hard for me to get off from work at 2, to be in class at 2:50, then being able to pick up my daughter. I started back out at the community college level and earned a certificate in computer operations. I went and obtained my bachelor’s in computer studies, and I realized I did not want to stay up until 3 o’clock in the morning because a period was missing or get that phone call that a program had just messed up.
That’s when I started thinking about working in this professional and continuing education space. What can I do more in that space as a career? That’s when I moved into online learning and the distance education piece of it.
On plans for UIndy’s online offerings
Tell me about some of your plans for UIndy Online and the Sease Institute.
UIndy has been really delivering and being a part of the Indianapolis community, even regionally and throughout the state. And I see UIndy Online and the Sease Institute as part of the ecosystem. For those learners who have some college and no degree, for those that have stopped out, we will have those online degree completion programs for them. For those individuals who want to reskill and upskill, the Sease Institute will have programming for them.
We will be working with our local corporations and community partners to determine, what do you want your employees to know coming in? What do your employees need to have for advancement, and being able to develop programming for them?
There are some certificate programs that are online now. How can we have those as stackable degrees so that they can actually obtain their degree, kind of giving them that learning in bite-size chunks where they don’t feel overwhelmed. I see the Sease Institute, and also UIndy Online, being a catalyst for those learners.
Who is the UIndy Online or Sease Institute student to you? What are you looking for, and who are you hoping to market this program to?
For those students who are looking for quality education, for those students who want engagement in their courses, for those students who want some pride in their education that they’re receiving — those are the students.
It’s for those who really feel like, ‘Can I go back to school? Is this really for me?’ Those are the students that we’re looking for, in addition to those who are already in industry and want that promotability. They want to be promotable where they’re already located. Sadly, we have many who are being laid off right now, and they’re having to reskill and upskill. There are also career changers. We have individuals now who are retiring in their 50s, but they’re also looking to go back and think about, ‘I’ve always wanted to go into computers. How can I do that now?’ We want to be able to help those individuals do that.
On creating space for nontraditional learners
You mentioned flexibility earlier and how important that was for you and for adult online learners in general. How do you plan to implement that into the programs that UIndy Online is offering?
It will be having programs that have courses within eight weeks. There will be some courses that still are run on the traditional schedule, but really being able to have those eight-week courses still run by our esteemed faculty, still gaining the same quality content and that engagement in those courses and also over the summer as well.
Let’s say we have some educators, and they are looking to upskill or reskill. Can we have programs for them, not just during the traditional semester, but while they’re off, they’re also taking courses as well? Those are the types of things that we’re looking for.
Why is it so important to work with adult students and non-traditional students, specifically?
Adult students and non-traditional students exist. They want the education. When parents send their child to college but they may not have gone to college, there is a sense of pride that they want that college degree, too. There is a sense of social and economic mobility. It improves the lives of their families.
That prior learning assessment is really critical and crucial, because if you feel like you’ve got to start all the way from the bottom to get here, and you look at the number of years that it’s going to take you and also the cost, you feel like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m defeated before I even start.’
For UIndy Online and the Sease Institute, we want to look at measures and that flexibility, and also the pricing, the affordability. We want to relieve that pressure for them and provide support services for them as well. And then those parents who go through our programs are able to really be there for their child as they go through their program. It’s really just coming full circle and being able to add to the social and the economic mobility.
Claire Rafford covers higher education for Mirror Indy in partnership with Open Campus. Contact Claire by email claire.rafford@mirrorindy.org, on most social media @clairerafford or on Signal 317-759-0429.
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