2026 State of Inclusive Excellence
Oregon State Ecampus serves more than 16,000 online learners each year, with just over a quarter residing in Oregon and the rest studying from all 50 states and more than 50 countries. This reach means that OSU’s online programs are improving lives and communities far beyond our physical campuses. These online students are pursuing degrees in critical, high impact fields such as engineering, public health, environmental sciences, and psychology — areas where workforce needs are significant and where graduates directly contribute to healthier, more resilient communities.
The Ecampus Student Outreach & Success team, my work focuses on ensuring that these learners — many of whom are working adults, caregivers, first generation college students, or military affiliated — have equitable access to a high quality OSU education. My team’s recruitment, support, and persistence efforts help students overcome barriers that often limit educational opportunity. This includes proactive outreach, personalized coaching, wraparound support, and ensuring that online learning environments uphold national standards for quality and student success.
Our pursuit of the Quality Matters (QM) Learner Success certification reflects this commitment. It is the first framework of its kind focused on student-centered and student-influenced measures of success. Earning this certification not only affirmed our commitment to holistic student success but also contributed to OSU receiving the Eduventures Innovation Award. This recognition underscores how our work is shaping more inclusive approaches to measuring the success of online learners, specifically as a model for institutions nationwide.
My work expands access and opportunity by creating pathways for learners who have historically faced barriers to higher education. This includes working adults, first generation students, parents and caregivers, military affiliated learners, and those living in rural or underserved communities. Through our high quality online programs and support systems my team leads, we remove barriers related to geography, work schedules, and life circumstances. This ensures that students who cannot attend in-person courses on a traditional campus still have an equitable opportunity to pursue and complete an OSU degree.
Our Quality Matters (QM) certification in Learner Success, as well as the Eduventures Innovation Award that followed, was rooted in a deeply community engaged approach. We integrated student perspectives at every stage, treating OSU’s online learners as key partners in defining what “success” should look like for them as students. Through surveys and ongoing feedback systems, students consistently tell us that they measure success not by graduating on a traditional timeline, but by mastering course content, advancing in their careers, and maintaining steady academic progress while balancing complex lives.
These insights directly shaped the inclusive definition of learner success that guided our QM process. Together with students, we defined success as helping learners:
- Get a strong start at OSU
- Make steady progress toward degree completion
- Master course and program content
- Strive for academic excellence
- Feel supported and valued as members of the OSU community
- Complete their degrees
By using student voices and lived experiences as the foundation of our standards, our work becomes not only more effective but more equitable and ensures that our systems reflect the realities of the communities we partner with.
My work reflects OSU’s Land Grant mission by ensuring that high quality education is accessible to people who cannot come to campus but who still deserve the opportunity to benefit from Oregon State’s teaching and research. Online education allows OSU to serve learners across rural Oregon, tribal communities, military installations, and regions without local higher education options—extending the university’s reach far beyond Corvallis.
By leading student outreach and success initiatives for online learners, my work helps fulfill OSU’s promise to deliver education that is practical, community focused, and responsive to the real conditions of people’s lives. Online education allows us to honor the Land Grant mission not by requiring students to come to OSU, but by bringing OSU to them.
One of the foundational metrics we use to understand and support student success is sense of belonging. Since 2019, OSU Ecampus has measured belonging on our annual student surveys, asking about students’ connections to peers, whether they feel supported by faculty and staff, whether they feel they matter, and whether their learning environment is inclusive. Over time, we’ve seen our belonging scores steadily increase as we’ve launched initiatives and programming specifically focused on fostering community among online learners.
Much of this progress comes from our intentional communication and support strategies. We use language that reflects the realities of OSU’s online students, acknowledging that many are adults, part time learners, caregivers, or balancing multiple roles, while also ensuring references to support services emphasize virtual access rather than “stopping by” an office. This may seem small, but for online students, it signals that OSU sees and understands their experiences.
We also build belonging through persistent, proactive engagement. Our team’s outreach campaigns center around milestones, and when a student stops enrolling, we help students feel connected and guided even when challenges arise. We normalize the experience of adult and online learners whose enrollment patterns are fluid and complex. Additionally, holistic success coaching provides individualized support, helping students navigate personalized goal-setting, motivation, and the unique circumstances that can shape their learning pathways.
Finally, our onboarding and orientation resources are designed with equity and belonging at the center. The Ecampus Online Orientation uses student stories and national best practices to help learners — especially those returning to school after long absences — feel welcomed, confident, and part of the OSU community from day one.
Together, these strategies ensure that online students not only persist in their programs but feel seen, supported, and connected to Oregon State University, no matter where they live.
Beyond the increased sense of belonging scores mentioned previously, Ecampus continues to maintain a new student retention rate that often sits around 86%. We have also seen consistent increases in graduation rates for online learners. These outcomes reflect the effectiveness of our proactive outreach, coaching, and support systems in helping students stay on track and complete their degrees, even while balancing work, caregiving, and other complex life responsibilities.
There is also a meaningful impact on the broader OSU learning community. Online courses frequently include a mix of traditional aged students and adult learners with rich professional and personal experience. This dynamic enhances the learning environment for everyone. A 19 year old student engaging in discussion with a classmate in their 40s — someone shifting careers, raising a family, or bringing years of workplace leadership into the conversation — gains perspectives that deepen their understanding of course concepts and the real world contexts in which they operate. These intergenerational, experience rich interactions strengthen OSU’s academic community and enrich the educational experience well beyond the online modality.
Together, these outcomes demonstrate that supporting online learners not only improves individual student pathways but also strengthens the fabric of learning across the entire university.
National and statewide recognition underscores the significance of our work and the standard it sets for supporting online learners. Beyond the QM Learner Success certification and the subsequent Eduventures Innovation Award, OSU Ecampus is consistently highlighted as a best practice model for online student support, most recently by EAB. These recognitions affirm that our student centered, equity minded approach is not only effective but also influential across the broader landscape of online education.
Oregon State has also been ranked among the top 10 providers of online bachelor’s programs by U.S. News & World Report for 12 consecutive years. This sustained national visibility signals that our commitment to high quality online learning is both exceptional and enduring. Together, these honors reflect the broader value of our work: We are helping to shape the future of online education by demonstrating what robust, inclusive, and evidence based student support can look like at scale.
Looking ahead, I am hopeful because OSU Ecampus has built a strong, coordinated model for supporting online learners — one that must be sustained and scaled as enrollment grows and the university advances its goal that Every Student Graduates. Dedicated online learner services are not optional — they’re the infrastructure that turns access into completion. Our distinct Student Outreach & Success services are a proven driver of outcomes for online learners whose needs differ meaningfully from those of on campus students. When we design systems around the realities of adult, working, caregiving, and first generation learners, we see measurable gains in belonging, retention, and degree completion. Preserving this dedicated model is central to maintaining OSU’s quality and standing as a leader in online education.
I also see tremendous potential in deepening OSU’s commitment to financial accessibility for online learners. Many Ecampus students are supporting families, working full time, or returning to education after long periods away. Increasing equitable access to institutional aid and financial support would remove a major barrier and create more inclusive pathways for degree completion. Expanding affordability aligns directly with OSU’s mission and would have an immediate, tangible impact on the lives of the learners we serve.
What gives me hope is the momentum we have already built and the clear evidence that intentional, equity minded, specialized support transforms outcomes. With continued investment in student centered practices and by affirming the necessity of dedicated services for online learners, OSU can further advance inclusive excellence and ensure that all learners, including those online, have the opportunity to thrive.
