General Information
A Pioneer in Technological Education
Founded in 1865 and considered one of the best technological universities in the United States, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) is one of the nation's oldest private technological university. It is consistently ranked among the top 60 universities and rated as one of the best online MBA and Graduate Engineering programs by U.S. News & World Report. Also rated one of the top 25 "most wired campuses" by Yahoo! Internet Life, the balance between learning and application is at the heart of WPI's approach to education.
Reaching Students Across the Globe
The university is located in Worcester, Massachusetts, with a main campus of 80 acres. Its Advanced Distance Learning Network (ADLN) has opened the doors to WPI for many professionals. For more than 25 years, WPI has been delivering high-quality distance education to graduate students around the world. Courses are delivered online using a variety of technologies, including streaming video, audio and text files, and simulations. In all courses, interaction between the student and professor occurs through various communication channels—email, fax, telephone, virtual chat, and discussion boards.
Both online and in the classroom, WPI provides quality graduate education to 1,100 graduate students and a thorough conceptual foundation in the sciences, engineering, and management to over 2,700 undergraduate students. Its Corporate and Professional Education division has delivered 4,000 programs to more than 70,000 professionals. The faculty actively encourage students to demonstrate their ability to apply what they learn to real-world problems, and students gain an appreciation for how the solutions to those problems might impact their jobs and the world around them.
Leveraging Faculty Excellence
WPI's faculty is dedicated to teaching excellence, practical application in business settings, and innovative research. The distance learning programs at WPI are taught by the same full-time faculty who teach in its highly rated on-campus programs. WPI realizes that campus-based and distance courses often have to be structured quite differently. Therefore, the faculty work in conjunction with an onsite professional instructional design team to ensure that distance students get the same high-quality academic experience as those learning on campus. Students emerge from these academic programs well rounded, with the confidence, the interpersonal skills, and the commitment to innovation they need to make a real difference in their professional and personal lives.
Providing Quality Programs at a Distance
The same rigorous university admission standards apply to all students at WPI. Students are not admitted to specific "distance learning" programs; rather, they are admitted to WPI. Students then decide which courses they need to take at a distance. On-campus and distance credits may be combined to complete certificate or degree requirements or entire programs may be completed at a distance. And because most students are enrolled in either a graduate certificate or master's program, the level of dedication and qualifications of participating students is high. Distance learning students get the same high-quality class content, same materials, same dedicated faculty, and same diploma as on-campus students—with absolutely no residency requirements.
Maintained by webmaster@wpi.eduLast modified: March 11, 2008 14:22:12