By SUSAN JONES
When the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences wanted to expand enrollment through more online/hybrid programs in 2020, Dean Tony Delitto said, “We were very naive when it came to how we actually do this, and I’d have to say Pitt wasn’t very much help. Pitt at that time was actually not doing much online at all.”
And those that did have online programs were usually going to external online provider management companies (OPMs), which would charge as much as two-thirds of program tuition for their services.
SHRS finally found a company, Noodle, that opted for a straight contract agreement instead of revenue-sharing.
“But more importantly, they agreed to kind of show us how to do it as they were doing it for us,” he said. “And in the time between 2020 and last year, we slowly onboarded an infrastructure that took over what the OPM was doing.”
By 2023, SHRS’ online programs were largely self-sufficient, although still using Noodle for some services, and the school was starting to look at expanding its mostly hybrid offerings.
“That was about the time Chancellor Gabel came on board last year, and she had a very different attitude about online education and saw it as more of an option that we should be exploring at Pitt,” Delitto said. “She was pleased with what we were doing at SHRS, and asked if I would take our knowledge that we’ve done here and apply it to the whole University.”
This was the genesis of Pitt EDGE — The Center for Excellence in Digital Education — which was announced earlier this semester by Provost Joe McCarthy and will be headed by Delitto in a new role of associate provost for digital education.
For now, Delitto will continue as SHRS dean in addition to his new job, through Jan. 31, 2025, according to an announcement from Anantha Shekhar, senior vice chancellor for health sciences. An interim dean will be appointed for the spring semester while a national search for Delitto’s successor is conducted.
Getting started
“I kind of envision it as a how do we become the University’s internal OPM, and help the deans do everything from start to finish with regard to creating online and hybrid education programs, both credit and non-credit,” Delitto said.
He said the chancellor has set a goal in the Plan for Pitt to increase graduate enrollment by 15% in the next three years, “and I think the online space is one area we can do that.” Although he said Pitt doesn’t aspire to create a high volume of online educational programs, such as at Penn State or Arizona State.
SHRS has seen its graduate and professional enrollment almost double from 2015 to 2024 (from 828 in fall 2015 to 1,478 this fall, according to the University fact book), and “most of that is due to our online programs,” Delitto said. “We actually have lost enrollment in our residential programs, just like most of the other schools at Pitt.”
Some of the online or hybrid offerings they’ve added or expanded include a new master’s degree in health informatics, the physician assistant studies and the doctor of physical therapy program, and an occupational therapy post-professional program. SHRS also is ready to start an online master of arts speech language pathology once they receive accreditation.
For all these programs, new faculty were brought on board. “I think people make a mistake when they think they can just add another cohort to an existing faculty,” Delitto said. “I don’t know about other schools, but our faculty have full time jobs. I can’t imagine giving them another full time job.
“One of our schools here didn’t plan for more faculty, and consequently they can’t recruit (faculty), because you can’t spread your faculty that thin. And then, because you can’t recruit, how do you pay for all of what you invested to create the program?”
Delitto said SHRS hired instructional design technologists and learned about more modern marketing strategies to get students into the recruitment funnel.
The first thing schools need to do is figure out if there is a market for the program they propose. For SHRS, that wasn’t an issue. The school regularly got 1,000 applications for the 60 residential doctor of physical therapy slots, and even more for the physician’s assistant program.
“That’s not the rule out there in most of what we’re doing in the graduate/professional space,” he said. “The question that deans have to ask themselves: Is there a workforce shortage out there? What’s really driving Pitt EDGE is trying to address workforce shortages, and then working backward from the workforce shortage to what kind of offerings can Pitt put out there to address the workforce shortage. And what does the public want? Do they want degrees? Do they want non-degrees? Do they want certificates?”
He said they’ve learned much about stackable credentials and will help schools decide what direction to go. The Pitt EDGE office will have its own marketing, communications, recruitment and enrollment team.
“We plan to do a whole portfolio analysis for Pitt over time, and we’re working with a marketing firm to do that, but really, it’s going to be up to the deans to try to find where their niche is out there and and if they have the willingness to go online, and if it fits with what their faculty thinks could be a credible program.”
Pitt EDGE also will have a group of instructional design, technology people who will work to create programs and make sure they’re meeting accrediting standards, and another group that will deal with more of the non-credit-bearing, continuing education and lifelong learning programs.
Finding students
For SHRS, the ability to attract students from rural areas of Pennsylvania into a hybrid doctor of physical therapy program has had benefits for Pitt, the students and their home communities. If students from Pitt go to those areas for training, they often don’t stay. “But if we recruit students from those areas for hybrid education, they generally stay in those areas,” Delitto said.
The provost said in his announcement that the plan is to have at least five new online programs over the next five years. Delitto said several schools already have plans in the works, which Pitt EDGE will help refine.
In health sciences, the schools of nursing and dental education are on the leading edge. There long has been a shortage of dental hygienists, particularly in rural areas, which Pitt hopes to address. Pitt Business and the School of Education also have strong ideas about how to proceed.
“I’m confident we’ll have at least five programs (in five years),” Delitto said. The key is finding areas with workplace shortages and not a lot of competition from programs at other universities.
And then they need to find a path to people to recruit, “whether it’s four-year colleges that can feed us, or even paths that we can create with community colleges (where students) get their baccalaureate training, and then we can mainline them into our hybrid programs.”
He said they hope to identify 20 to 30 programs in the next few months. “The ones that go first are going to be the ones that we really are best assured we’re going to have that perfect storm occur.”
Once the programs are identified and the investment is made, “It takes time to build it,” Delitto said. “It takes time to hire the faculty, and then, if there’s an accrediting process, that takes a little more time. But then you start to recruit the students. And in our experience, within two or three years you’re crossing that line where you’re now starting to become in the black. And then it’s time to start looking for the other programs.”
Delitto said he didn’t go to school to become a online educator, “but I really do enjoy it.”
“We are recruiting students from demographics that we had never recruited from, not just geographical areas of the country, but also, a much more diverse population of students than we have in our residential programs. And it illustrates the barrier of picking up and having to move to Pittsburgh semi permanently for three or four years. A lot of these people are second-career individuals with a lot of work-life balance issue. These are rigorous programs. But it’s more than worth it’s more than worth it to see it happen.”
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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