Whether Cougs are serving aboard an aircraft carrier, exploring the jungles of Sumatra, or living a couple thousand miles away in Toledo, Ohio, the Global Campus offers the same faculty and high-quality learning available at Washington State University’s brick-and-mortar campuses, built on three decades of experience.
(Courtesy WSU Global Campus)
Andrea Mora-Tice (’21 Anthro.) visited nearly 30 countries and lived on two different continents during her studies at Global.
“My husband just got a job in Indonesia and we had an 18-month-old daughter when I enrolled. The fact that WSU let me study online and live outside the country was amazing,” Mora-Tice says. “I never thought I would be a college graduate, but I could do my work when my daughter was asleep at night.”
Chancellor Dave Cillay says Global has come a long way since it began as a distance degree program 30 years ago, but its mission remains the same.
“Our DNA hasn’t changed. It’s all about connecting students to faculty to curriculum to one another,” Cillay says. “We’re a land-grant institution, and this program is all about providing access to higher education to the citizens of Washington and beyond.”
And in that endeavor, Global is succeeding. In the spring of 2022, Global Cougs came from 49 states and 48 different countries.
Cillay, who joined Global’s staff in 2003 and later was selected as the campus’s first chancellor in 2019, says the shift to online learning during the pandemic brought Global’s existing strength to the forefront.
“All the tools have been here for a while,” Cillay says. “We’ve been doing online learning for decades. The change is in the perception. And as the maturity of online learning becomes more accepted, we’re really going to diversify our student audience.”
Enrollment numbers have continued to grow since the pandemic began, Cillay says, and while the average student at Global is a working professional in their 30s, Global has seen students in their 60s and as young as 16 enroll.
“It’s a great time for WSU,” Cillay says. “We’ve got some really interesting opportunities in front of us through our Global Campus. I see Global continuing to improve over the coming years.”