Distance education at the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute

$5.33 million gift will support education and research in marine biotechnology

April 25, 1997---Lectures, laboratory learning and scientist-to-scientist collaboration will go live, across the Atlantic Ocean, as a result of a $5.33 million gift from the Swedish-based Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation to the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute, the University of Bergen in Norway and the University of Goteberg in Sweden. The gift from the Wallenberg Foundation was announced in early April. The three organizations will form a partnership to develop a first-of-its-kind virtual international university, which will offer for-credit classes and eventually confer graduate degrees with a focus on education and research in marine biotechnology.

"This represents a hallmark in distance education and research," said Dr. Rita R. Colwell, president of the UMBI. "We will be using information technology to its fullest potential in an international arena."

Real-time video teleconferencing and the Internet, with e-mail and World Wide Web sites, will link students and faculty from the University of Maryland, the University of Bergen and the University of Goteberg. Lectures will be interactive, with live question-and-answer sessions. Laboratory learning also will go live, making it possible for a professor in Maryland to teach a student in Norway a laboratory technique or show a view from an electron microscope.

Research faculty at the three universities will be connected electronically to collaborate on solving environmental problems in the Baltic Sea and the Chesapeake Bay, advance procedures in aquaculture, to improve cultivating farm-raised seafood, and train current and future scientists in applying biotechnology-based solutions to prevent and control diseases that strike marine plant and animal life.

Faculty will receive special training to use two-way video conferencing effectively to simultaneously lecture to students in their immediate classroom and their virtual students, in different countries, on a different continent.

Students will benefit by having an ensemble of professors whose expertise in marine biotechnology will reside under the roof of the virtual university. "Faculty at all three institutions bring unique research strengths to the table and their ability to collaborate in research and curriculum development will have real benefits in educating the next generation of scientists," said Dr. Colwell.

"Environmental problems will be worked on jointly. The Baltic Ocean and the Chesapeake Bay share a legacy of pollution that has disrupted their ecosystems. These bodies of water, and the people who depend on them for food and livelihood, will be served by the collaboration," she added.

The telecommunications industries in the United States, Norway and Sweden will play an integral role in providing technologies to ensure success of this unique venture in distance education. The first class could begin as early as fall. The Wallenberg Foundation, established in 1917, is dedicated to supporting and promoting scientific research.