For many prospective students, life is a balancing act.

From family responsibilities and full-time jobs to long commutes and other logistics, the time to pursue post-graduate studies can prove elusive.

With its expanding slate of fully online degree and certificate programs, the CCSU School of Graduate Studies offers more ways than ever to help students achieve their dream of an advanced degree. 

While classroom learning traditionally operates on a fixed schedule, online programs follow an asynchronous, self-study model, according to Dr. Christina Robinson, interim associate vice president for Graduate Studies, Research, and Faculty Development.

Online programming allows Central to offer “high-quality educational programs to students who would not have been able to come to the bricks and mortar CCSU campus,” Robinson says. “It allows us to expand beyond our time and geographic constraints in ways that we didn’t think were possible before.”

Is online education an intuitive fit for all programs? The gears are turning for those tasked with creating academically rigorous online curriculum. And it’s working.

“You can actually do Nursing in Hospice and Palliative Care fully online,” says Robinson. “They’ve found ways to do course content with recordings and interactive demonstrations.”

The only offline experience is the practicum, which is scheduled at the student’s convenience.

Fields like Data Mining, offered fully online, “play to the strengths of the material as well as the pedagogical techniques,” she says, and are a natural fit for online curriculum.

“What’s important from CCSU’s perspective is that we’re meeting the needs of our students and our faculty and that we’re doing so in a way that maintains the academic rigor of the programs,” Robinson notes.

In addition to three certificate programs in Accounting, Data Mining, and Supply Chain and Logistics, CCSU currently offers five fully online master’s programs: Data Science; MS; Modern Languages - Spanish; MS; Strategic Communication; MS; Nursing: Hospice and Palliative Care; MSN; and Supply Chain & Logistics Management; MS.

Information about CCSU’s online programs can be found at www.ccsu.edu/grad and www.ccsu.edu/academics/online.