banner


UH System Adds New Distance

By Marqueita Sam
UHCLIDIAN STAFF


Photo by Don Asdel

Andra Ribarits, UH-Clearlake alumna, interviews with Marcella Densman, human resources staffing coordinator for Duke Energy, during the Gulf Coast Job Expo Sept. 19. The Expo, sponsored by Career and Counseling Services, was open to the public and brought 42 employers to campus.

This fall the University of Houston System opens a new satellite site at its Cinco Ranch location in Katy. The new location will allow some UH-Clear Lake students to take classes without having to travel to the campus. The site will serve all students in the UH System.

The Cinco Ranch site is the most recent addition to the University of Houston System Distance Education CampusNet. A similar site has been in place in Sugarland since fall of 1995.

As an outlying site of University of Houston (central campus) and UH-Victoria campuses, the Cinco Ranch site has been in operation for many years under the name West Houston Institute. According to Director of Distance and Extended Education Laurel Dodds, the name changed in October 2000 from West Houston Institute to University of Houston at Cinco Ranch.

The UH System petitioned the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board for the West Houston Institute to become a Multi-Institutional Teaching Center or MITC, designed to deliver courses and degrees through distance education. Cinco Ranch is the name of the housing development where the new site is located. "The University of Houston-Clear Lake will offer two face-to-face graduate classes in educational management at Cinco Ranch in spring 2002," Dodds said. "UH-Clear Lake has also agreed to offer courses in software engineering and instructional technology at the graduate level via the Internet."

Although the Cinco Ranch location will be designed to accommodate UH-Clear Lake's growing population while offering an alternative to students who have to travel long distances to the campus, there is still the issue of providing student services at Cinco Ranch without students having to travel to our campus.

"Cinco Ranch is a successful system, and with anything it will continue to grow," said Steve Sutton, associate dean of students. "One of the things we focus on is support service. Services such as financial aid, the use of the library, and fee payment, which would normally require students to come to the campus. Instead, we want to bring the service to the student by providing someone there on site."

The Cinco Ranch site is part of a partnership among University of Houston System universities, which include University of Houston, UH-Clear Lake, UH-Downtown and UH-Victoria.

For more information on distance and extended education and services, contact Laurel Dodds at (281) 283-3026, or for more information on services provided at Sugarland, contact Sutton at (281) 283-2568.

Top of Page | Front Page