From the Office of the Provost
Episode 15: Pitt EDGE: Advancing Flexible, Digital Education
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Joe McCarthy: Hello and welcome to "From the Office of the Provost," a podcast that highlights exciting activities and initiatives in the Office of the Provost or University-wide that bolster and enhance our collective vision for growth and transformation. I'm your host, Provost Joe McCarthy, and today I'm joined by Tony Delitto, Associate Provost for Digital Education. Tony heads the Center for Excellence in Digital Education, more commonly referred to as Pitt EDGE.
Pitt EDGE drives the University's strategic vision for online, hybrid, and continuing education, collaborating with schools to support the full life cycle of program development and online learners.
As Tony knows, in consultation with Chancellor Joan Gabel, we engaged in a year-long dialogue with the academic leadership team, as well as with additional experts across campus and beyond. As a result of that work, Pitt EDGE was created to develop and enhance Pitt's educational efforts in the digital space. Pitt EDGE aligns deeply with the Plan for Pitt 2028, as we embrace our collective commitment to cultivating student success, especially as we seek to significantly broaden enrollment in general and graduate enrollment in particular by 2028.
Before joining the Office of the Provost in October 2024, Tony served as dean of the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences for nine years and chair of the Department of Physical Therapy for 21 years. There he increased graduate enrollment with his strategic initiatives to launch the school's first online and hybrid programs. So, we're so grateful to tap his expertise to lead Pitt EDGE. Welcome, Tony.
Tony Delitto: Thank you, Joe. It's really a privilege to be here and honestly to be part of this this work in such a pivotal moment for the University.
When you and the Chancellor approached me about this role, what struck me was the intentionality behind it. It wasn't just putting out online courses. It was really about building something durable and something that was strategic and that would position Pitt for real sustained growth. I'm grateful for the opportunity and I'm excited to share what we're about to build.
McCarthy: Great. Thanks, Tony. As I mentioned, and then you just reiterated, Pitt EDGE was created to drive Pitt's educational efforts in the digital space. Could you tell us a little bit about why that was a necessary step for Pitt to make as we continue to grow as a university?
Delitto: Honestly, the landscape for higher education has changed dramatically, and Pitt needed a centralized approach to take advantage of this.
Prospective graduate students today are making decisions very differently than they were even five years ago. They're working professionals with families and geographical constraints. They still want quality and rigor of a Pitt education, but they just need more flexibility and they need affordability. If we’re not meeting them where they are, then we're leaving this enrollment growth on the table.
But you can't just put programs online and just hope for the best. There are plenty of examples across higher education of institutions that rushed into online delivery without the right infrastructure. And they end up with programs that really look like an afterthought without much time and energy put into them. That damages the reputation, enrollment, and ultimately the students you're trying to serve.
What was missing at Pitt and at many universities was a centralized function that bridges together all the capabilities needed to do this well. Market analysis, instructional design, faculty development, enrollment support, student success – these can’t operate in a vacuum and in silos. They must work together in a coherent and end-to-end system, and this is what Pitt EDGE was built to do.
McCarthy: So, I'll get into some of your experience in SHRS and how you plan to continue to build in the way that you just described. But I've had the pleasure of getting to know you a little bit better now that you joined my office about a year ago, and I know that you have a personal stake in some of this work. Can you share a bit more of that with our audience?
Delitto: Yeah, I was the quintessential adult learner. In the vernacular that I learned, I was what we would call, I was not an on-timer. I didn't come out of high school and go right into college. In fact, as a matter of fact, I joined the workforce right out of high school.
You hear people in, in this area talk about getting their start in the steel mills. I got my start on the railroad. I was on a fast track to become a locomotive engineer, and it was a very well-paying job. I was, great benefits. Everything was going great. And then all of a sudden, two things happened.
One was I injured my back, and I got to know a person in the health field, and I was just completely flabbergasted at how quickly the person got me back on my feet.
But secondly, we had an oil crisis, and I know I'm aging myself with the oil crisis, but we had an oil crisis and in turn led to a recession. And I realized very, very quickly that there was no work. I was staring at the phone, waiting for it to ring.
Both of those things hit me very hard and I realized that I was going to take, I took stock and look which many people do. They get into a job and they realize this may not be the right thing.
And then I realized I was three years out of high school, and going to college was very intimidating for me. So, I needed to get back into the swing of things, and I started taking community college courses and things like that.
At that point I realized what an adult learner is up against because I'm still working. I mean, even though the work had slowed down a lot, I had to, I still had the constraints of work, and I can't imagine the constraints I would have had had I had a family and trying to balance all of that. I never forgot those experiences.
And I finally had to leave the job to go to school full-time. What about the people that can't do that? You know, what about the people that really, they still need to work?
And they, and this, comes all full circle to Pitt EDGE. We're trying to reach that adult learner. We're trying to make a Pitt education affordable, accessible, and also flexible so that we can best accommodate people, bring the education to the person where they are.
McCarthy: Yeah, thanks for sharing that. I know a lot of what you just talked about will resonate with our audience. We've been talking about transfer enrollment in some of these podcasts and of course helping adult learners is right in there.
As an engineer myself, the locomotive engineer bit resonates with me personally too. I might have to start calling you Casey Jones every now and then.
So anyway, getting back to the business at hand, I'd like you to talk a bit more about your expertise in SHRS and the strategic model that you built to launch those very successful online and hybrid programs while you were there and how that model has informed what you're doing in Pitt EDGE.
Delitto: Yeah, I'll start out by saying that I'm not formally trained in online education or any of those areas. At SHRS, we were under different sorts of constraints. We had a lot of programs that were highly sought after, very large applicant pools, and we had space constraints in terms of our ability to handle that.
So, what we did was, we decided to explore the online option. And that was fighting an uphill battle because conventional wisdom was that these were skill-based health fields and how are you going to teach that online?
That was the big thing. But we looked around and realized that educational methods and technology have come a long ways.
And what we ended up doing was realizing that we could take care of the skill-based components with immersions and take care of the didactic component with totally online. And we divided up the courses that way.
We learned what works, and we also learned what didn't work.
We realized that what we had to really focus on as we were building these programs out was, first of all, instructional quality. We didn't want to lose any of our reputation as being excellent in the area of, some of our programs are ranked in the top 10, many of the programs at SHRS. And the DPT program we were putting out at the time was ranked number one. We didn't want that ranking to suffer, and we realized that we had to be on top of our game with regard to instructional quality.
We also had to realize that you could build the best program in the world, and you just can't assume people are going to come to it.
This is where the world has sort of moved very, very quickly in the last 20 years. The whole idea of marketing and enrollment management has really, really pushed itself forward.
And we know this in the undergraduate world because we have a state-of-the-art operation in the undergraduate world. We didn't have quite that level of, of ability in the graduate space, and we had to build that at SHRS.
And that was the other component that was very important for us, is learning that whole marketing and enrollment management strategy so that we could get the word out about the programs that we had and make sure that we were competing with the people out there, other institutions, for those really good applicants.
McCarthy: So, in a bit of a culture shift, you just described building a team over in SHRS, and now you're trying to do that centrally within Pitt EDGE. So, you've made some strategic talent shifts to staff this new center. Can you tell us a bit more about how you've built your team?
Delitto: Well, I mentioned the instructional design and the quality of instructional design, and we really needed to bring that know-how to EDGE.
And luckily we had a critical mass of instructional design within the Center for Teaching and Learning. And as you know, we've been able to work with the Center for Teaching and Learning to combine that talent.
But we also brought the know-how that we had from SHRS with regard to some really standardized processes to put in place, especially in the area of instructional quality. And we wanted to make sure that all programs put out by EDGE were all subjected to the same quality standards.
We also realized that, to have a brand, we had to have the same structure across different programs. And that was really, really important to us. And I think we found out later is that instructors like that, too, and most importantly, students like that. Students like to go to a course, see a structure, and not go to the next course and see something totally different. They want to see things the same way.
And we learned that at SHRS, and we're bound and determined to keep that going within Pitt EDGE.
And then secondly, what we needed to do was have a leader in the instructional design area who understood these processes as well as understood instructional design. And we have that in Rae Mancilla. We brought her over from SHRS, and she's just doing on a larger scale what she did for us at SHRS.
Secondly, we had to have the enrollment management. We learned from our online provider management company most of the tactics that went on in that. And then we were able to successfully onboard all of that in SHRS so that we weren't using the online provider management company anymore.
We want to start at Pitt EDGE using our own infrastructure for marketing and enrollment management. And we brought over Natalie Baney, who has really orchestrated this plan for us. And we have a three-year plan to put ourselves on the map with a state-of-the-art marketing and enrollment management system within Pitt EDGE.
McCarthy: That's great, Tony. I'm excited for how that infrastructure is not only going to positively impact our online programs, but really all of our graduate and professional programs where we really have had a somewhat inefficient distributed model.
So, it'll be excellent for us to leverage best practices in all of those spaces and really expose as broad of a population as possible to our really excellent programs that we have here at the University.
So, let's pivot into a little bit of advertising here. It's been a bit over a year since the launch of Pitt EDGE, and I know that you've done some incredible work in collaborating with schools across the University and campuses, frankly, across the University. And so I'd like, now that you're gaining some significant momentum, for you to talk about some early wins and highlights since the launch.
Delitto: Probably one of the first things that was handed to us was the RN to BSN program at Bradford.
One of the things we realized from that was that we had a natural industry partner here in UPMC. They were looking for a program like this, and Bradford was able to offer a program like that. They had already offered a residential program, and it was our job to convert that to a totally online program. We were able to build that in six months, and we were able to really solidify our partnership with our industry partner, UPMC.
And now that program is launched and ready to go. It's a two-semester program and it's designed to be totally asynchronous and work with people who have graduated from a two-year nursing degree program. These programs are internal to UPMC.
Now, we also realize that not all of our applicants would have all the capabilities, have all of the background and coursework necessary for a bachelor's degree, so we're presently building a bridge program for those people, and that'll probably be either a one-semester or a two-semester program that they'll need to take before they enter that.
That was all done with an industry partner, and the industry partner seems very enthusiastic about it. And it's a model that we would like to replicate over and over again.
And it doesn't have to be in the health field. It could be anywhere. It's working with an industry partner, determining what it is they need, put the programs together in, again, an accessible, affordable way, and give them the flexibility they need. And we can do this in a very responsive way to the community.
McCarthy: I love how that's focusing on workforce needs in the commonwealth and within the region. But so, it's kind of checking two boxes, both the learner-centric, student-focused box, but as well as the societal box. So, I applaud Pitt EDGE for doing that.
As you continue to lead Pitt EDGE, what's on the horizon? What can folks expect to see and how can they get involved?
Delitto: First thing is we've been working with the schools really closely and building and we've taken the same approach, which is, you know: What's out there? What is the workforce need? That's the first question we ask people. And we really want to address the workforce need because it does two things for us.
The first thing it is, it's our responsibility to address workforce needs, but it's also, it's automatically sustainable then. If you're addressing a workforce need and you're doing it in an affordable and accessible way, we should get applicants and we should be putting people through, especially with the reputation that Pitt has. We should be able to attract the students and put out excellent graduates for employers. So that's taking care of that stakeholder.
So, the first thing to do is to go to the deans and the leadership of the schools and ask them: How can you build a program that addresses the workforce needs?
And then we also need to look at who our competition is out there, competition meaning other institutions that are putting out things. And the perfect storm is high workforce need where there's not a lot of competition. That's the recipe for sustainability.
So, schools have been very responsive to this. For example, the School of Nursing has come up with a master's degree in nurse practitioner that has a huge industry need. There's a huge workforce need out there for it. They've answered the bell with a hybrid program that they're going to start admitting students this fall for. And we're very excited about that program and we're looking for more wins like that across the campus.
McCarthy: Is that fall program the next one you anticipate, or we have something in the pipeline before that one?
Delitto: We do have, this summer, we're building a program in the MPH—it's a combined MD-MPH program.
So, we worked with the School of Public Health to come up with the MPH part of the combined program, and we're going to be admitting students this summer for that program.
And that was a program that we're proud of because we were able to turn that program around very, very quickly and build the courses for that program. And they're going to be ready to launch this summer, and it'll continue into the fall.
McCarthy: Excellent. So, one last question for you, Tony, just so that our audience hears the impact that you're having even beyond the health sciences. What do you have in the pipeline outside of the health science schools?
Delitto: There's a program in, a master's program in the School of Education—combination of so many things that we're trying to do at Pitt. It's a master's degree in infant mental health. First of all, there's a huge need within the commonwealth for this, and we have the only program in the state. So, it's just a natural for us to put this program out there.
The first thing we had to tackle was the price of the program. You have to realize that the people who are working in this area don't make a lot of money. And we were able to bring the price point down to a little over $500 per credit hour, which is way lower than our published price point. But that meets the affordability goal, and it makes it accessible for people that are working out there.
And we'll have a certificate ready in this program for the fall and we'll have a master's degree in the following fall ready for that program. And again, it's a huge need. We put it out at a price point that matches what people can do. And I think that this is going to be something that is going to be of a huge benefit to the commonwealth.
McCarthy: Yeah, thank you, Tony, for joining me today and sharing all of this great work that you and your team are doing in Pitt EDGE.
I love the fact that we're, as we've mentioned a couple times now, focusing on workforce needs regionally, and designing this in such a way that we can launch affordable programs that help us to impact our students as well as society positively.
As usual, I want to thank our listeners as well for tuning in. This is Provost Joe McCarthy, and this has been ‘From the Office of the Provost.’
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