The Kennebec Journal

March 16

UMaine's new distance-learning chief knows remote

By David Offer
Columnist

FAIRBANKS, Alaska -- Curt Madison is planning a drive around Maine, from Augusta to Rockland, then to Fort Kent and Presque Isle, and perhaps to all nine of the distance learning centers of the University of Maine System.

It's a long trip in Maine terms, but a minor journey for a man who thinks of distance Alaska-style.

Madison, 60, was named director of distance education for the university system Monday. He'll move to that position from Fairbanks, where he has led distance education at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks since 2002.

Madison will start his new job May 1 and spend his first week traveling around the state, meeting people at the system's remote-learning sites.

"I'm so excited about Maine," he said in an interview Monday. "The people in Maine know how to do these things very well and they want to bring things to the next level."

Madison said Maine led the nation into distance learning by embracing broadcast television in the mid-1980s.

Distance learning refers to teaching in classrooms, computer labs and conferences linked via the Internet and other modern methods of communication.

Madison said some Alaska educators think distance learning stops at audio conferences.

"That's insane," he said. "Imagine teaching calculus by audio conference."

There has been a sharp growth in distance education in the last several years, especially in large, rural states where it's difficult for many students to get to a college campus.

"The way people have access to knowledge now will probably not be the way people have it" in the future, he said.

Madison said it should be possible for students to take all -- or nearly all -- the courses they need to graduate in many academic areas through remote learning centers.

"The whole idea" is to set up distance learning courses so students don't get to a dead end where they must move to a campus to finish a degree, he said. "You don't want to find all of a sudden there is one class you can't get that you need to graduate."

Madison said he's familiar with the criticism that distance education can't work for some courses, but is steadfast: Even courses involving laboratories can be taught using distance learning, he said.

He offered a vision of students at centers as far apart as Rockland and Nome, Alaska, taking the same course, and said he hopes to arrange for Maine students to take part in a course on oceans taught by a world-respected scientist at the university in Fairbanks.

Madison comes to his new position with an atypical academic background.

He graduated from high school in Illinois then attended Stanford University. After one semester, he took leave from Stanford to live and work in France and then to hitchhike to India. He returned to the university after two years and graduated in 1971 with degrees in engineering and psychology.

Then, out came his hitchhiking thumb, again. This time, the destination was Alaska. After a few years, he moved to Minneapolis, where he attended a community college to learn welding.

He then won a scholarship to the University of Hawaii to earn a master's degree in political science, where he studied telecommunications in the South Pacific. Though he was in a place with a climate far warmer than Alaska or Maine, the research in communication provided a base for future work in these colder places.

After earning his degree in 1976, Madison returned to Alaska where he wrote 23 books about life in Native villages and produced television programs about Native music, languages and customs for PBS.

In 1999, he moved to the University of Arizona, where he earned a doctorate in communication. He returned to Alaska to work on developing a communications network to link 56 clinics that are part of a health system that serves remote Native villages.

In 2002, he joined the university to a lead distance learning programs that serves students in Alaska, the other 49 states and 14 countries -- including some in Antarctica.

His new job will serve the entire Maine university system.

He will be based in Augusta and will report to Allyson Hughes Handley, president of the University of Maine at Augusta. His wife, Rebecca, currently is director of an e-health network serving hospitals and medical clinics in Alaska, and will join him in Maine.

"Because Dr. Madison has successfully brought higher education to people living in some of the most remote places in the nation, if not the world, we feel supremely confident he will help us deliver on our distance education goal of ensuring a quality university education is accessible to anyone in our state, no matter where they live," Hughes said in a statement.

Madison said he is eager to bring his experience to Maine.

"This is a good time to put our oar in the water and do something," he said.

Maine is the place to do it because "they know what success feels like. There is a mindset of people who can do things."

David B. Offer is the retired executive editor of the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel. He is spending a year in at the University of Alaska Fairbanks as the C.W. Snedden chair in journalism. E-mail davidboffer@hotmail.com.