Digital Learning Expansion Serves Land Grant Mission
We welcomed Arizona State University President Michael Crow and his team to Rocky Top this week to meet with leaders and share with our campus and community the impact our partnership to expand digital learning will have on the university and our state.
Last spring, we announced our collaboration—an unusual one for two large public research universities that are more accustomed to competing than partnering—to expand our digital learning capabilities and create opportunities for more students to earn a UT degree.
There are nearly one million Tennesseans with some college credit but no degree. We want to change that.
By leveraging Arizona State’s expertise and success in building digital learning infrastructure, we’re able to quickly scale up our academic programs and provide more options for more students.
Higher education doesn’t just change lives; it changes entire communities. The challenge is that not everyone has the ability to come to campus for that education, especially those who have careers, families, and other responsibilities keeping them close to home. Digital learning allows institutions to meet learners wherever they may be—both geographically and in their stage of life.
The final event of Arizona State’s visit this week was an open forum with our campus and community. There, President Crow said something that really resonated with me:
“You have to be in the business of innovating,” he said, because if you don’t “all of a sudden, you find yourself competing against other universities in meaningless things.”
What actually matters as a public university—and as a land-grant institution in our case—is the broad impact we are having, the work we are producing, the discoveries we are making.
We cannot achieve our fullest potential alone, whether that means working with employers to meet workforce needs, with industry to advance science and technology, or with other institutions to provide the best possible education to our students.
I am grateful to President Crow and ASU for embarking on this partnership with us and helping us deliver more opportunities to more people in Tennessee and beyond.