Letter from Vice President of Faculty Services and Scholarship

Dear Faculty,

I would like to take a moment to welcome you to the Aspen family. We are excited that you will share your expertise with our students and we hope you will find teaching at Aspen to be rewarding and satisfying. You will discover that there are teams of people who are here to support your success as a faculty member and to help you be effective contributors to your own personal and professional growth. To begin, it is important to start with our mission, which forms the foundation for everything we do at Aspen. It drives our behaviors, thoughts and decisions. At Aspen, we are “dedicated to offering any motivated college-worthy student the opportunity to receive a high quality, responsibly priced distance-learning education for the purpose of achieving sustainable economic and social benefits for themselves and their families.” In today’s world of excessive debt related to getting a college education, Aspen seeks to disrupt the higher education space by providing viable alternatives for paying tuition costs that do not depend on an over-reliance and over-consumption of federal financial aid loans. Instead, we offer a pioneering monthly payment plan for most of our programs and we strive to keep costs down so that we can offer tuition rates that are affordable for the vast majority of Americans.

Another component of our mission is that we will provide high quality, distance-learning education to every Aspen student. This is an area where you can help most. What makes a good faculty member? First, you have to have the appropriate background to teach the content area. Next, you have to have the right mindset to help students when they need it, especially when they are exhibiting counter-productive behaviors that interfere with them reaching graduation. The simplest advice is, “Be present!” That is, show up for class… not just being available on the side, but being actively engaged with the course topics by sharing your knowledge and experience with students through discussion boards, assignment feedback and additional resources you add to the classroom learning experience. Finally, it is important that you have high standards that are fair and consistent for all students while supporting them as they learn new concepts and skills, as well as challenging them to reach higher levels of understanding about their discipline of study.

Our mission is only achievable if a student successfully completes the program requirements and graduates with a degree. This is the primary goal of teaching at Aspen… graduation. Everything that you do as a faculty member directly impacts student success. Even the smallest things send messages to students about their likelihood of successfully completing their goal of earning a college degree. It all starts with the student-teacher interactions at the course level, so we invite you to take this responsibility seriously and personally as you work with students to develop them, coach them, nurture them, and support them in being successful in every course.

Thank you for "being present" and for all the hard work in getting students to graduation!

Kevin Thrasher, EdD

Vice President, Faculty Services and Scholarship

Aspen University

Certified as true and correct in content and policy by

Joanne Weiss, Provost

August 31, 2023