Previous Story
Cyberstudent from Saipan heads to W.Va. for degree
|
Posted on May 15 2004
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP)—A student from Saipan who’s never set foot on campus will spend two days traveling to West Virginia University this week to pick up her master’s degree and meet the adviser she has only seen on a computer screen.
For three years, Robin Lizama Palacios has studied and conferred with adviser Barbara Ludlow through WVU’s growing distance-learning program.
“It’ll be like meeting a movie star,” said the 28-year-old mother of two, who earned a 4.0 grade-point average in early childhood intervention.
Palacios, a special education teacher on the tiny island in the western Pacific Ocean, needed to upgrade her certification but also had job and family obligations. When two colleagues who had already earned degrees from WVU told her about the distance-learning program, she figured she could juggle her studies with the needs of her husband and two sons, ages 6 and 3.
Palacios linked her computer to WVU’s Allen Hall, allowing her to participate in real time. Ludlow, a professor of educational theory and practice, said Palacios often contributed to discussions by computer or cell phone.
“She didn’t have to do that, but she did,” Ludlow said. “And it was always exciting for us. Our students from West Virginia and other states could hear the cultural perspectives from a fellow student on the other side of the world.”
The time difference was a challenge: At 8am in Morgantown, it’s 11pm on Saipan.
But Palacios said she found it more difficult meeting the demands of her boys.
“Cooking dinner, cleaning the house, having children, raising them … I think it was difficult because my sons were always calling for me during the sessions,” she said. “I had to ‘watch’ my classes from home with everything else going on.”
Palacios’ husband, Gus, and her parents will travel with her to graduation.
She will not participate in the main commencement ceremony at the Coliseum on Sunday but will instead accept her degree at a smaller ceremony at the College of Human Resources and Education.
