Catholic Universities Collaborate on Online Program
Notre Dame de Namur University has taken numerous stabs at expanding the reach of its online grasp’s application in public administration.
It labored with Deltak (a web software control issuer now a part of Wiley Education Services) to create the web version of its in-man or woman application in 2012, after which brought control of this system in-house “after we learned a way to control the [learning management system] and technical components of this system,” stated Hernan Bucheli, provost of the Roman Catholic institution within the San Francisco Bay Area.
Neither technique “has established to achieve success for growing the scale of that program,” Bucheli said.
Now the college is attempting some other tack. It is turning to another Catholic organization with a sturdy tradition of online training, Florida’s Saint Leo University, to market the web M.P.A.
Notre Dame de Namur officials trust Saint Leo’s know-how in marketing online programs, and its nonprofit Benedictine popularity will assist it to succeed in “messaging a Catholic values-primarily based application” to a broader target audience in a manner that neither a for-earnings enterprise nor Notre Dame de Namur itself may want to.
Bucheli said, “We labored out an awesome settlement” with Saint Leo, declining to share pricing info.
“Small impartial Catholic institutions are stronger together than they may be apart,” he stated. “Collaborating is the type of key.”
Jeffrey Senese, Saint Leo’s president, couldn’t agree more. Its partnership with Notre Dame de Namur is just one of numerous the Florida university is exploring with other (usually) religion-based establishments, mainly Catholic ones.
“I see better training in a state of consolidation that is beginning to arise,” Senese said. He notes that approximately 15 percent of the 230 popular Catholic universities in the United States have national financial rankings, suggesting they might face trouble soon.
“We’re looking to be Catholic and Benedictine approximately” those preparations, such that they’re “mutual and now not one-sided.” While the partnerships Saint Leo is exploring are in distinctive geographical regions, in most cases, they leverage Saint Leo’s scale and bolster the alternative colleges’ records or niche areas.
Senese stated that the partners get a few potentials or know-how they didn’t have; Saint Leo receives “extra sources” to retain to perform its undertaking. He declined to offer information about the financial association, pronouncing only that it was more favorable to Notre Dame de Namur than a corporate partner could be.
Bringing Different Things to the Table
Saint Leo went online more than twenty years in the past. At the same time, its then-president, Arthur Kirk, discovered that doing so became vital to keep its prominent position in educating army carrier individuals at far-flung study facilities. In 1997, it struck what changed into an unusual deal with Bisk Education, an early participant in what is now referred to as the net software management, or O.P.M., market. About a decade later, even though it added all of the educational layouts, advertising, recruiting, and different offerings in-residence, a circulate Inside Higher Ed profiled in 2011.
The college has over 60 online packages, including dietary supplements, with 30 bodily locations in seven states. Nearly any other decade after it stopped outsourcing online services to a corporation, Saint Leo now desires to be outsourced; however, in what Senese said, it will be a particular manner from the various company companies inside the space.
“Part of our assignment is to function as a Catholic, Benedictine group,” Senese stated. “We’re a business, and we want to make money. However, we also need to serve. So those relationships are of greater quality to the other institutions than us.”
That’s now not to mention Saint Leo does not assume to derive significant blessings from the partnership, over and above whatever additional sales it produces. Notre Dame de Namur’s place in Northern California is a draw, potentially giving Saint Leo entry to a “place where we do not have a marketplace presence now,” stated Senese. “NDNU’s a tenth our length, but they have a sturdy marketplace role, having been there one hundred years.”