- Sloan Semester -

This just crossed my desk:

As you may have heard, Sloan-C is working the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) and the Sloan Foundation on a project called the Sloan Semester to bring free online courses to students displaced from colleges shut down due to damage from Hurricane Katrina. We have been putting together a website that provides and collects information that will help in this effort and we are now asking for your help in getting this information out to students that could potentially benefit from this initiative. The Boston Globe estimated that as many as 175,000 students will be displaced this semester due to this disaster. Many will have to seek classes at other institutions, even now that the semester has already started at most of these colleges. Sloan-C has organized more than 100 institutions that offer quality online courses in an accelerated format, starting in October (we are still accepting additional volunteer institutions at the website). This is a grassroots effort, meaning everything hinges on your help to get this information to the students. The press has already given us some coverage, but that can only do so much, it is really up to our personal efforts to get the word out. Please contact as many personal and professional contacts as possible with the hope that the more people you contact, the more likely more students will find out that this is available. Even if you don't know a student from the affected schools, someone you know might, so please forward to all you feel comfortable forwarding to.