Ed Flippen, Commission Chairman, welcomed the attending members and thanked the President of Old Dominion University (ODU), Dr. James Koch for hosting the morning session of the meeting. Mr. Flippen introduced Dr. Koch who provided the Commission with an overview of ODU’s Technology Initiatives.

Dr. James Koch described Teletechnet and demonstrated how it works to Commission members. Dr. Koch’s remarks included registration and cost statistics, including that the cost of providing instruction to Teletechnet students was less than for on-campus students. He noted that the on-campus costs were not directly comparable since they included PhD students also, as an example. Dr. Koch discussed the relationship between delivering instruction at a distance and student learning. He heralded Teletechnet as an avenue for increasing access to higher education, citing as an example the transmission of courses to ships at sea and to more than 50 sites throughout the commonwealth as well as in other states. Dr. Koch highlighted weekend college, noting that their facilities are in use 7 days a week.

The Provost of ODU then provided an in-depth demonstration of distance learning techniques, including the electronic white board and the overhead cam. She noted the availability of videotaped lectures and copies of the class notes stored on the network for later review by students. Faculty development initiatives, training, and support were discussed as providing the infrastructure and contributing to Teletechnet’s success. An engineer is available to assist faculty with technical difficulties during classes and to consult with faculty members about how they could improve their use of the technology.

Students enrolled in distance learning courses expressed higher levels of satisfaction than on-campus students did and there have been large increases in technology degrees awarded.

Anne Moore, from Virginia Tech, joined the Blue Ribbon Commission meeting via satellite from Blacksburg. This distance learning initiative is a cooperative effort among Virginia institutions. Her comments focused on how the Electronic Campus of Virginia plans to move from a cooperative to a virtual university. Access to the virtual university is currently available through http://www.vacec.bev.net. She listed the different institutions currently participating and noted that more than 400 courses are currently available on-line through the web-site. She described the registration process, which is currently handled by each of the institutions independently. She provided an account of a planning process recently undertaken by the cooperative in which three committees were established to look at future initiatives. The cooperative is also working out the details for a program that would allow students to take courses from 3 or 4 colleges while working toward a degree.

Dr. Denzil Edge, Connected Learning Network, discussed Challenges for Building Distance Learning Programs in Higher Education.

Dr. Edge emphasized the importance of planning in undertaking distance learning initiatives and the need to develop partnerships with faculty to provide them with incentives to convert their instructional methods to encompass technology.

Carol Hampton, from the School of Medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University, provided an overview of how distance learning is being integrated into the medical curriculum. Her presentation Telemedicine and the 21^st Century included a video that showed how this technology could be used to provide remote access for some kinds of medical care. Telemedicine is the use of telecommunications technology to deliver health care services and health professions education to sites that are distant to the host site or educator. More information is available through http://www/cbil.vcu.edu.

The President of Tidewater Community College, Dr. Deborah M. DiCroce addressed the Commission during lunch. She discussed the nature of community colleges and some of the special programs being implemented by TCC. She highlighted the institution’s initiative to diversify their funding base, asking businesses to invest in community colleges across the state.

Gary T. Henry, Research Director, Council for School Performance, presented data to the Commission on Georgia’s HOPE Scholarship program. He described the need based scholarship, which is funded by the Georgia Lottery as available to students earning a B or better. Since the scholarship was implemented in 1993, the number of students earning a B or better in high school has increased each year. Are students doing better? Or are grades being inflated because of the scholarship?

Georgia has seen an increase in SAT scores in first-time freshmen since the HOPE Scholarship was implemented, as well as an increase in minority student college attendance overall. However, the percent of minority students attending state research institutions has remained unchanged and while fewer than 25% of students are being retained for 4 years, attrition has been decreasing each year.

Phyllis Palmiero, Acting Director SCHEV, and Mark Hampton, Director of Institutional Research, SCHEV discussed Financial Aid in Virginia. They provided data on Virginia Financial Aid programs within the context of tuition levels in the state. The presenters described sources of financial aid for in state undergraduates at 4-year institutions and at 2-year institutions. For example, 51% of in-state undergraduates at public 4-year colleges and universities received some form of financial aid ($6,359 on average in 1997-98) and 16% of in-state undergraduates at public 2-year colleges received some form of financial aid ($2,076 in 1997-98).

Ms. Palmiero described SCHEV’s concept of "True Need," which it is currently considering. This concept would take into account all reasonable resources that a student may use to finance higher education. True need is the need that remains once expected family contribution (as currently defined), gift aid, work study and reasonable amounts of federally guaranteed student loans have been applied to the cost of higher education.

SCHEV restated its goals for higher education as outlined in the Virginia Plan as meeting 100% of the true need. SCHEV is proposing an $18 million increase to the budget for financial aid programs that it administers in order to meet this goal.

Marcia Boyd, Director of Financial Aid at Christopher Newport University, provided an overview of the financial aid process from an institutional perspective. She provided a breakdown of financial aid allocations by source and highlighted some individual cases of unmet need. In addition, Ms. Boyd described some of the difficulties in administering financial aid to students, such as documenting receipt of outside scholarships.

This presentation was cancelled.

R. Kirk Jonas, Deputy Director Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC), summarized its review of undergraduate student financial aid in Virginia's public institutions. The review focused on need-based financial aid and merit and incentive scholarships. After a preliminary review conducted by SCHEV staff found that almost one-half of students who are eligible for the State's largest need-based financial aid program do not receive any funds from it, JLARC concluded:

• SCHEV needs to strengthen its oversight of the Virginia Student Financial Assistance Program.
• Virginia needs to articulate and prioritize its goals for the need-based financial aid system.
• Virginia may wish to defer action on merit and incentive scholarship programs until the goals for need-based financial aid are more clearly articulated.