FORUM INFORMATION
SPEAKER BIOS
SUSAN C. ALDRIDGE, PhD
President of University of Maryland University College
Co-Chair, United States-China Forum on Distance Education
Dr. Susan C. Aldridge joined University of Maryland University College (UMUC) as president on February 1, 2006, bringing with her more than two decades of experience and passion for creating educational opportunities for students around the world. She is also the co-chair for the United States-China Forum on Distance Education.
Dr. Aldridge comes to UMUC—the largest distance education program and second largest public university in the United States—with a wealth of ideas for promoting and strengthening the university, increasing enrollments, and expanding UMUC's international, corporate, and military presence. Currently, UMUC teaches 92,000 students worldwide and provides on-site instruction in 24 countries. UMUC is an internationally recognized award-winning distance education leader. Dr. Aldridge's goal is to continue to strengthen UMUC’s position as the premier institution providing quality educational options to adult students—Maryland students searching for coursework to fit their schedules and career goals, corporate executives, adults who need flexible class times to accommodate the demands of jobs and family, distance learners (both stateside and abroad), and military personnel.
Dr. Aldridge brings an energy and unwavering commitment to academic quality and world class student services. She serves on the Maryland Council of University System Presidents, on the PreK-12 Leadership Council, on the board of the Servicemembers Opportunities Colleges (SOC), and as an elected board member of the International Academy of Business Disciplines. Most recently, Dr. Aldridge served as vice chancellor for Troy University’s University College and eCampus in Alabama.
Prior to joining Troy University, Dr. Aldridge served as a faculty member of the National University of Singapore. She has held leadership positions in government and corporations. For her academic research and professional contributions, Dr. Aldridge has received numerous awards and recognitions from services such as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Administration on Aging, U.S. Social Security Administration, and the Governor of Colorado.
Dr. Aldridge received her doctorate and master’s degree from the University of Colorado, and her bachelor's degree from Colorado Women’s College.
XUEQIAN YAN
Director of China Youth Center for International Exchange
Co-Chair, United States-China Forum on Distance Education
Xueqian Yan is the director of the China Youth Center for International Exchange. He was awarded a bachelor’s degree in construction structures in 1982, worked at Beijing General Municipal Engineering Design and Research Institute between 1982 to 1991, studied doctorate-level courses at Japan Tohoku University between 1991 to 1995, and has been the visiting professor of both Beijing University of Technology and Hunan University since 1995. He established the U.S.-China distance education exchange program in 2001 and was one of the founders of the first U.S.-China Forum on Distance Education in 2005. He also the served as the executive chairman of the organizing committee of the first, second, and third U.S.-China Forums on Distance Education. He has been to the United States 26 times.
SHAOGANG ZHANG
Assistant President, China Central Radio and TV University
Co-Chair and Keynote Speaker, United States-China Forum on Distance Education
Professor Shaogang Zhang, a researcher, is the assistant president of China Central Radio and TV University. He was awarded a bachelor’s degree in sciences at Jilin University, a master’s degree in education at Peking Normal University, and studied as a visiting scholar at Nottingham University. He has led and participated in instructional design of various courses and resources development, construction of audio-visual teaching materials, and development of a research works management platform. In addition, he has undertaken research upon management rules and regulations of distance education administrative permission, studies in distance education resources bank, and policies for rural distance education. His number of papers published and research reports submitted total more than seventy. Currently he is leading ‘Evidence-based and Comparative Studies Upon Distance Education Cost Effectiveness of Radio and TV Universities’, and acts as the standing director of the China Continuing Engineer Education, standing director of the China Association of Education Technology, and secretary general of the Higher Education Committee of Distance Education.
Professor Zhang was the executive president of the organizing committee of the first and third Sino-American Distance Education Forum.
NICHOLAS H. ALLEN, DPA
Provost Emeritus of University of Maryland University College
Dr. Nicholas Allen was the first provost and chief academic officer of UMUC from 1998 until his retirement from that post in 2007; he was interim president following resignation of Gerald A. Heeger in 2005 until Susan C. Aldridge’s appointment as president in 2006. During the years of dramatic growth in online education, Dr. Allen provided academic leadership and strategic direction to UMUC's worldwide operations as the institution emerged as the 12th largest public university in the United States and one of the world’s major virtual universities with online enrollments reaching 177,000 in 2007. Dr. Allen is a collegiate professor in the university’s Graduate School of Management & Technology.
Dr. Allen first joined UMUC in 1987 as a senior faculty member and director of general management and executive programs in the university’s Graduate School. He became dean of the school in 1991 and led it through a time of significant program innovation and expansion. Prior to UMUC, Dr. Allen served twenty-three years in various leadership positions with the U.S. Coast Guard, a public humanitarian agency of some 40,000 members. He received his BS degree from the U.S. Coast Academy, MBA from Oklahoma City University, and MPA, and DPA degrees from The George Washington University.
Dr. Allen is a frequent and strong voice for continuing and higher education, and an advocate for using technology and process reengineering to achieve access to high quality, affordable education on a scalable basis. He currently serves on the Commission for Lifelong Learning of the American Council of Education, the Executive Strategic Council of IMS Global Learning Consortium, and the Interim Board of Trustees for the International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE).
JOE FLOYD
Reference Librarian, University of South Florida in Tampa
Joe Floyd is a reference librarian at the University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa, since 1985. He holds BA degrees in anthropology and psychology and a master's in Library & Information Sciences from USF.
ILENE FRANK
Adjunct Professor, Graduate School of Management & Technology, University of Maryland University College
Ilene Frank has been a reference/instruction librarian at the University of South Florida since 1974 and an adjunct for UMUC since 2001. She has also taught courses both face-to-face and at a distance for the University of South Florida’s School of Library and Information Science. She offered her first distance learning course in 1996, which spurred her interest in the use of technology for teaching and learning. Ms. Frank has an undergraduate degree and a master's in painting in addition to her master's in library science.
THOMAS HÜLSMANN
Managing Director, Center for Lifelong Learning
Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg
Thomas Hülsmann has worked with the Center for Distance Education since 1999 and is a member of the Arbeitsstelle Fernstudienforschung (unit for research in distance education), a joint venture of the School of Education and the Center for Distance Education at Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg.
Recently, Hülsmann developed the Certificate Distance Education in Developing Countries within the UMUC/Oldenburg cooperation. The certificate comprises two newly developed courses: Policies for Distance Education in Developing Countries and Educational Technologies for Distance Education in Developing Countries.
Beyond this cooperation with UMUC, Hülsmann developed a Professional Seminar for Distance Education in Developing Countries, which will be pioneered in cooperation with three African Distance Learning Centers (Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana) of the Global Developing Network (GDLN) of the World Bank Institute.
Hülsmann holds an MS in mathematics from the University of Bielefeld. Prior to earning this degree, he had studied at the University of Tübingen and the London School of Economics.
SUSAN KO, PhD
Executive Director, Center for Teaching and Learning
University of Maryland University College
Dr. Susan Ko has been executive director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at UMUC since October 2003. The Center, under the Office of Faculty Affairs, is responsible for providing faculty development for more than 3,000 worldwide faculty, including administration of CTLA 201, the award-winning online teaching training course required for all UMUC faculty teaching online.
Dr. Ko holds a doctorate from Yale University in Chinese language and literature and previously spent more than ten years teaching world literature, Asian studies, and humanities in the California State University system. Her teaching experience included both traditional classroom-based programs as well as distance education. She also spent more than five years working in the area of faculty development in the for-profit education sector and as a consultant to develop online teaching training programs before coming to UMUC.
Dr. Ko is currently a collegiate associate faculty member at UMUC, teaching courses in Asian studies for the School of Undergraduate Studies as well as teaching in the Masters of Distance Education program of the Graduate School of Management & Technology.
Dr. Ko is co-author with Steve Rossen of a leading book on the subject of online teaching, widely adopted by faculty development programs nationwide, entitled Teaching Online: A Practical Guide, now in its 2nd edition from Houghton Mifflin. She has frequently given presentations and workshops on the subject of online teaching and learning at conferences over the past decade.
SUSAN M. KRYCZKA
Director, Office of Distance Education
Boston University
Susan M. Kryczka is the director of the Office of Distance Education at Boston University. She joined BU as its first director in 2000. She has over 28 years of experience in distance education. She directed the distance learning programs at Northeastern University in Boston, the Illinois Institute of Technology (Chicago) instructional television system and began her career in distance education at the City Colleges of Chicago.
Susan also developed and teaches an online course in Boston University’s undergraduate completion degree program. Susan speaks widely at conferences about establishing quality standards and processes in administering distance education units within a higher education setting.
She holds two graduate degrees, an MA in journalism from Northeastern University and MA in history from Loyola University of Chicago.
FREDERIC M. LITTO, PhD
President of the Brazilian Association for Distance Education
Dr. Frederic M. Litto, a New York City native, received his BA at the University of California, Los Angeles, his PhD at Indiana University, Bloomington, and his Livre-Docente degree at the University of São Paulo.
Dr. Litto recently retired from University of São Paulo after thirty-six years as professor of communications. From 1989 to 2006, he directed University of San Pãolo’s "School of the Future," a self-sustaining research laboratory investigating Web-based digital learning materials and practices.
He is currently in his fourth four-year term as president of the Brazilian Association for Distance Education (ABED), a 2,400-member learned society which hosted the 22nd International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE) World Conference of Distance Education, in Rio de Janeiro in 2006. At the end of 2007, he was elected to the six-member Executive Committee of the ICDE and served this position from 2008 to 2011.
Dr. Litto is also a member of the editorial boards of American Journal of Distance Education (USA); Advanced Technology and Learning (USA); Open Learning (U.K.); International Review of Research in Open & Distance Learning (Canada); and Revista Iberoamericana de Educación a Distancia (Spain). He has served as a consultant to the World Bank, and is a member of the ICDE Task-Force on Open Educational Resources. In the second semester of 2006, he was the “Rio Branco Scholar” in Education & Technology in the Institute for Education of the University of London, researching the issues involved in Open Educational Resources in developing countries.
STELLA PORTO, DSc, MDE
Director of the Master of Distance Education Program, Graduate School of Management & Technology, at University of Maryland University College
Dr. Stella Porto is currently the director of the Master of Distance Education program in the Graduate School of Management & Technology at UMUC. She joined UMUC in 2001, after relocating from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to the Washington, D.C. area. At UMUC, she has also performed roles as director for the Master of Information Technology program, associate chair and acting chair in the Information and Technology Systems Department in the Graduate School.
Dr. Porto earned a BS in electrical engineering in 1986 at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). She then worked for a few years as a hardware designer and went on to obtain her master's and doctoral degrees in informatics in 1991 and 1995, respectively, at the same institution. In May 2008, she also received a master's degree in Distance Education from UMUC.
After her experience as a computer hardware designer, Porto became a professor in computer science at Universidade Federal Fluminense in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. As a researcher, her worked focused on the fields of parallel processing and heuristic methods for combinatorial optimization problems. As a teacher, her experience includes a variety of different courses in computer science, such as: algorithm design, parallel programming, computer architectures, parallel and distributed computing, and parallel algorithms.
Since 2001, Dr. Porto has worked in the field of distance education. She has been published in several conferences, including the EDEN Workshop, ALN, DLA, ICDE, and UCEA in the past six years. Combining her knowledge in information technology and her more recent experience and study in the field of distance education, her research interests include topics related to learning objects, new technologies, multimedia and course development models, as well as education in information technology.
SHAOZHONG YOU, PhD
Minister Counselor of the Education Office of the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in the United States of America
Dr. Shaozhong You graduated from the University of International Business and Economics with a bachelor’s degree in commercial economics in Beijing, China. He earned a master's degree from the Thunderbird Graduate School of International Management in Arizona and holds a PhD of economics from Wuhan University in China. He received professional training and practice at Johnson & Johnson International and the World Bank headquarters.
Dr. You taught international business and trade strategy as an assistant professor at the University of International Business and Economics from 1983 to 1986. From 1986 to 1990, he worked as program officer and deputy director of the Projects Division at the Office of Foreign Investment and Loan, State Education Commission of the People's Republic of China. Dr. You then served as assistant director general of the Office of Foreign Investment and Loan, State Education Commission, from 1990 to 1992. From 1992 to 1996, he served as deputy director general of the Office of Foreign Investment and Loan, State Education Commission. After years of international business and international educational investment, Dr. You started his foreign service for education diplomacy as chief consul at the consulate general of the People's Republic of China in Chicago, from 1996-2000.
Upon returning to China in 2000, he served as deputy secretary general of the Chinese Education Association for International Exchange, Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China. He then became secretary general of the Education Association for International Exchange, Ministry of Education, from 2001 until June 2005.
Dr. You is currently minister counselor of the Education Office of the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in the United States of America.
Forum Information
IMPORTANT DATES
March 15, 2008 Abstracts Due
March 28, 2008 Authors/Presenters Notified of Acceptance
May 2, 2008 Final Paper Due in Camera-Ready Format for Presentations
June 29 - July 2 U.S.-China Forum