Atwater man earns degree with online accessibility, face-to-face support

The ever-widening options of higher education online gave Chris Cox the flexibility and home computer advantage to earn his degree, but it was people power that cheered him over the finish line.

Today, a 2015 bachelor of science degree in information technology from Western Governors University hangs in Cox’s modest living room in Atwater, a testament to perseverance as well as his in-depth knowledge.

“This was the best choice for me to get a bachelor’s. I had transportation issues and life issues. This university helps people in unique situations,” Cox said, typing sections the listener missed as he spoke.

His unique situation involves having a disability that slurs his speech and limits his walking range. But the bus schedule that made getting to Merced College classes a two-hour commute illustrates a problem shared by many.

It took Cox, a 2006 Hilmar High grad, six years to graduate from Merced College and two years, five months, 23 days – he counted – to earn his WGU degree, an accomplishment his father did not quite live to see.

It was WGU’s “Team Cox” that tutored him when he struggled, he said, encouraged him when he despaired, stood by him as he grieved and burst into applause when his graduation speech finished.

He met his college-appointed mentor while John Porter was recovering from a cancer of the mouth.

“He was in the process of retraining himself to speak, so we worked together on overcoming our verbal communications barriers, doing our regular calls via video chat so we could speak and type with each other at the same time,” Cox said.

“You couldn't have made a better match,” said Mitsu Phillips, WGU’s associate provost for mentoring. Team Cox got as much from Chris as it gave, she said. Adaptations they worked through for him gave her department insight into providing better services for all students.

“We owe him a lot. We learned a lot about being more competent,” she said.

Winning skill competitions in high school led Cox to choose IT as a career, he said, after facing that his dream of swimming with orcas at Sea World was unlikely. He finished his college classes on a gaming-speed computer he built by hand, his assignment files neatly categorized on a fraction of its storage.

Without a commute, he was able to spend 5 to 12 hours a day on his coursework, including a capstone project of creating an online sermons archive for his church, the First Baptist Church in Atwater.

“I can complete classes on my schedule instead of waiting for a class time,” Cox said. “I knew I didn’t want to be that guy who sat around the house all day. I was motivated.”

The nonprofit Western Governors University has an added motivation for students to complete courses quickly. While colleges traditionally charge by the course, WGU charges a flat fee each semester, about $3,000 for most majors, with access to unlimited courses. Students can finish as quickly as they can or as slowly as they need, Phillips explained.

The courses have preset online content and testing, with test prep and practice sections. For the rough spots, instructors with expertise in the field provide individual instruction as needed. Mentors assigned to each student help them navigate which courses to take, how to sign up for financial aid and provide encouragement.

“The WGU mission is really grounded in expanding access to higher education, and a big part of doing that is to provide robust mentoring and support right out of the gate,” Phillips said.

WGU is among 3,509 accredited online colleges, according to the Open Education Database, from Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas, to Zane State College in Zanesville, Ohio. Nearly 2,000 of those are four-year institutions, including Ivy League schools and California State University, Stanislaus.

What they offer are traditional degrees, just in a virtual classroom.

Taking an entirely different approach are the Massive Open Online Courses, which are free but also a bit of a free-for-all. They span a wide range of often highly specialized topics and are not generally organized in a neat progression leading to a degree. U.S. colleges offer about a third of the world’s MOOCs. France corrals French offerings on a national MOOC platform, France Universite Numerique, or FUN.

Modesto Junior College computer science instructor Dale Phillips uses MOOCs to train his Linux Lab students on the basics. Sure, he said, they could use random YouTube videos, but this way he knows they all get correct information in a standardized format.

“I view (MOOCs) as the textbook for the 21st Century classroom,” Phillips said.

For the 22nd Century classroom, who knows? The clouds are no longer the limit. But their graduates will have essentially the same goal as every past century’s upcoming generation.

“I need a job,” Cox summed it up.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he added, “but I have the knowledge and the skills for companies who need a recent graduate.”

This story was originally published September 19, 2015 at 5:39 PM with the headline "Atwater man earns degree with online accessibility, face-to-face support."