2tor, Inc.

Greg Damiani

2tor Staff — Wed, 16 May 2012 18:57:45 +0000

Greg Damiani has worked as an infrastructure engineer, software developer, a Unix/Linux system administrator (with a wide-range of associated duties), administrator for BlackBoard at California State University and a technology project manager for finance, security, data centers, databases, storage, decommission, recovery and disaster recovery planning projects. His career focus has been to deliver efficient, stable and performant systems using open-source software, whenever possible. Most recently, he worked at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum through the memorial’s opening on the tenth anniversary of the attacks. Before that, he studied industrial engineering and systems of innovation in Italy. He comes to 2tor with the intention of continuing to build things that help people.

Andrew Trivas

2tor Staff — Mon, 14 May 2012 22:00:57 +0000

Andrew joins 2tor with 12 years of experience as an IT professional. After attending Towson University, his career began in the education and medical fields as a support specialist for the Maryland School of Pharmacy and Maryland Poison Center. Moving to Precision Network & Cable, Andrew oversaw the Hopkins Pathology Department, supporting students, faculty and staff. Advancing in his career, he maintained the network for Travelclick’s Baltimore and worldwide locations. His hopes for 2tor are to continue in the education field, bringing new technologies that service the community. His downtime is spent enjoying his family, friends and fiancé.

Stephen Shafer

2tor Staff — Mon, 14 May 2012 19:00:09 +0000

Steve began his professional career as a caseworker assisting formerly homeless older adults with mental illness transition to and maintain residence in permanent housing. He then moved to a decade-long position as the director of promotions/marketing and production for Moon Ska Records (where he also compiled a number of popular domestic and international compilations, and shot a ridiculously inexpensive music video for The Toasters on Super 8 film, which made its debut on MTV’s 120 Minutes and received extensive airplay on MTV and M2). Steve then worked in marketing and fundraising (specializing in writing grant proposals to foundations and government agencies) for several major cultural institutions, including The Metropolitan Opera, the Museum of Arts and Design, and Symphony Space. He lives in New York City with his wife and two children, and enjoys blogging about ska and reggae music. Steve graduated from Fordham University with a B.A. in English and Media Studies.

Jerilyn Dorsey

2tor Staff — Mon, 14 May 2012 18:23:05 +0000

Jerilyn Dorsey brings a unique background to 2tor. She has spent the majority of her career in telecommunications as director of sales and customer service at Verizon Communications. She recently comes to 2tor from the University of Pittsburgh as a data analyst for admissions and financial Aid. She holds a B.S. degree in Mathematics from Carnegie Mellon University and works as a seasonal registered tax preparer for H&R Block.

She has a passion for physical fitness and enjoys working out five days a week. She also enjoys spinning, traveling, playing chess and dancing, especially Zumba, line dancing and hip hop. She recently joined the hand dancing academy in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area.

Jessica Prudhomme

2tor Staff — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:13:31 +0000

Jessica most recently worked in Switzerland as program and marketing manager at Cultural Care Au Pair, where she led the recruitment efforts of the agent department by working with agent teams in over 20 countries across South America, Africa, Europe and Asia. Prior to this, Jessica held various positions in the nonprofit arena working with families and youth in Philadelphia and New York. She holds a master’s degree from Columbia University and brings eight years of operational and program management experience to the 2tor team. Jessica loves to travel and discover new places.

10 Startups Changing the World and What We Can Learn From Them

2tor Staff — Wed, 09 May 2012 17:18:35 +0000

By Ilya Pozin
May 9, 2012

For lots of startup founders, a big money valuation is just half the goal. Many startups are motivated by a singular drive to change the way we view and interact with the world around us. And while every startup can teach us something, the most disruptive often have the most profound lessons. Here are 10 of today’s most visionary startups to admire, and more importantly, model:

1) Instagram

Instagram is a popular photo sharing app that uses filters to enhance photos. After being released on the Android market, it set download records and built a community of over 50 million loyal users. With no marketing budget, Instagram relied entirely on an almost fanatical community of fans to spread the word, and sold to Facebook for almost $1 billion. Lesson: Build a community, nurture it, and the users will market you.

2) 2tor

Founded in 2008 by heavyweight education entrepreneurs, 2tor partners with top U. S. universities –including Georgetown, UNC, USC and most recently Washington University in St. Louis – bring their degree programs online. Its mission is to transform higher education by bringing it online without sacrificing quality, student experience or graduation and job placement rates. With $96 million raised in venture capital and clear success cases to date, 2tor has emerged as the market leader in the rapidly evolving School-as-a-Service sector. Lesson learned? Industry reform is always possible – it just takes some creative thinking.

3) Global Giving

Global Giving has transformed the way people invest in the developing world. Through developing a network of donors who fund grassroots projects the world over, Global Giving has raised over $65 million dollars and funded over 5K projects. Lesson: Giving back can create a vibrant social community.

4) Pinterest

Pinterest – a virtual pinboard that allows users to quickly and easily share images – has quickly grown into the third largest social network. With a growing community that shares thousands of visual collections, Pinterest has re-invented the social network. Pinterest teaches an important lesson: keep your site simple and easy-to-use and users will flock.

5) Airbnb

Airbnb, a website that lets people with extra space rent it out to travelers, took the hotel industry and turned it upside-down. The company grew to a $1 billion valuation in 2011, despite a huge PR scandal involving a burglarized home and less-than-stellar customer service. Airbnb responded quickly, improved customer service, instituted protections for hosts, and is now more popular than ever. Lesson: a PR disaster is only a disaster if you let it become one.

6) Square

Square has grown into a billion plus dollar company by providing mobile merchants a method to accept credit card payments. The company relies on growing its user base by giving the device and the app away for free, and generates revenue with a small percentage on transactions. Square teaches us that sometimes giving away your product for free can be the ticket to generating strong revenues.

7) Zappos.com

The world’s most popular shoe e-tailer began with a simple premise: focus on your customers and the rest will fall into place. Zappos has stayed true to that principle and in the process, redefined the definition of customer service. Its customer-centric policies have paid off – the company was acquired in 2009 for $1.2 billion. Zappos.com teaches us an important lesson: be great to your customers, and they’ll be great to you.

8) BetterWorks

Despite high unemployment, many firms are finding it difficult to attract and retain top talent. Enter BetterWorks, a workplace recognition and rewards platform that lets businesses engage their staff through innovative rewards through local partners. And it works, boosting engagement and productivity significantly. The takeaway: treat your employees well. They ARE your business.

9) Docstoc

Created by Jason Nazar and Alon Schwartz, Docstoc brought social to the dry world of professional documents. Though it began as a document hosting and sharing site, it evolved first by allowing users to sell uploaded documents, then by encouraging business professionals to participate, and finally by hiring a team of lawyers and business writers to create original content. Lesson: revenue models shouldn’t be static; they should grow along with the company.

10) Better Place

Better Place is a forward-thinking startup that builds transportation infrastructure for electronic vehicles. By investing in the infrastructure of tomorrow, Better Place is paving the way for greener and more efficient automobile technology. Better Place teaches us that targeting future markets and developing products for them can be a viable business model.

Please see the original article here.

Sandra Ostrander

2tor Staff — Wed, 09 May 2012 14:56:19 +0000

Sandy is originally from Massachusetts, where she graduated from Elms College in 2004 with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. She started her career as a Pediatric Intensive Care Nurse at Yale New Haven Hospital. Throughout her nursing career, she worked as a travel nurse in different Pediatric Intensive Care Units throughout the country, spent a few years as an organ procurement coordinator and a few years in nursing management. She comes to 2tor with a desire to encourage nurses to further their education through the Georgetown University online programs.

Currently, Sandy is living in New York and planning her wedding with her fiancee, Dale. In her spare time, she enjoys kayaking, traveling, zumba and spending time with her French Mastiff, Bella.

Law School Plans to Offer Web Courses for Master’s

2tor Staff — Wed, 09 May 2012 03:00:18 +0000

By Tamar Lewin
May 8, 2012

The law school of Washington University announced Tuesday that it would offer, entirely online, a master’s degree in United States law intended for lawyers practicing overseas, in partnership with 2tor, an education technology company.

Legal education has been slow to move to online classes, and the new master’s program is perhaps the earliest partnership between a top-tier law school and a commercial enterprise.

“We don’t know where the students are going to come from exactly, but we believe there is demand abroad for an online program with the same quality that we deliver in St. Louis, accessible to people who can’t uproot their lives to come to the United States,” said Kent D. Syverud, the dean of the law school, which currently offers students on campus a Master of Law degree, or LL.M., in United States law for foreign lawyers. “It’s not designed to prepare students for the bar exam.”

Nonetheless, graduates of the new program, which will include live discussions via webcam and self-paced online materials, would probably be eligible to take the California bar exam.

Washington University will share the revenues from the $48,000 program — the same tuition paid by students at the St. Louis campus — with 2tor, which will provide marketing, the Web platform and technical support, including a staff member to monitor each live class and deal with any technical problems that arise.

2tor, a four-year-old company based in Maryland, has partnerships in place with the University of Southern California, Georgetown and the University of North Carolina for online graduate degree programs in education, business, public administration and nursing.

Largely because of American Bar Association rules, however — under which approved law schools may not count more than 12 credits of distance education toward a Juris Doctor degree — legal education has been slow to shift to online classes. Students who earn a doctorate from a bar-approved law school are automatically eligible to take the bar exam nationwide.

But beyond that, each state sets its rules on who can take the bar exam. California, for example, is the only state that allows graduates of Concord Law School — which is not bar approved, but offers a fully online doctorate — to take its bar exam.

The bar association does not approve master’s programs, beyond certifying that a new one at an approved law school will not detract from the doctoral program.

About a dozen states allow some Master of Law holders to qualify for the bar exam, but in New York, those with master’s degrees are not eligible if they earned the degree online.

“It’s hard to make a definitive statement before a candidate applies, but California allows LL.M. students and online students to take the exam, and our program will meet their course requirements, so it should be a possibility,” said Tomea Mersmann, the associate dean for strategic initiatives at Washington University School of Law.

Gayle Murphy, senior executive of the California committee of bar examiners, confirmed that under the current guidelines, those with an online master’s from a bar-approved law school could be eligible. But with the advent of online degrees, she said, those guidelines might be revisited.

A growing number of law schools offer online master’s degrees in specialized areas of law, like taxation, health care, estate planning, the environment or business transactions. Florida Coastal School of Law, a commercial school, offers a master’s in United States law, created, like the Washington University program, for international lawyers.

New York University Law School’s online Executive LL.M in Tax program enrolls more than 100 students, mostly from the United States, with a smattering from other countries.

“Online students can see videos of all the brick-and-mortar classes,” said Joshua D. Blank, faculty director of the graduate tax program, which has been available online since 2008. “We use the same technology Netflix uses to watch movies online. Now that there’s the technology to do this, I think there’s a lot of room for these programs to grow.”

But so far, law schools offer nothing like the online computer-engineering classes at Stanford or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that draw thousands of students.

Washington University is not aspiring to that scale. Classes will be kept small and, Mr. Syverud said, will re-create the discussion between students and professors that characterizes most in-person legal education. Mr. Syverud said he hoped to enroll 20 students in the first group, starting in January, and have four groups a year, totaling more than 100 students.

Please see the original article here.

Legal Education and the Web

schow — Tue, 08 May 2012 10:24:02 +0000

Washington U. law school to offer fully online degree

by Steve Kolowich

May 8, 2012

In an unusual move among highly ranked traditional law schools, the Washington University Law School today unveiled [1] a fully online master’s degree program in U.S. law. The program will be designed and taught by Washington Law faculty using a platform developed by 2tor, a Maryland-based online education provider. It will begin enrolling students in January 2013.

The St. Louis-based law school says the new online program is meant primarily for practicing lawyers in foreign countries as a way for them to get credentialed as experts in American law without having to quit their jobs and move to the United States to take classes. The program does not offer a path to a J.D., and is not designed to prepare students to take the bar exam — although the American Bar Association (ABA), the sector’s most powerful regulatory body, has “acquiesced” to Washington Law’s new online program, and about a dozen states will permit its graduates to sit for the bar exam, according to school officials.

Nevertheless, Washington Law’s foray into fully online degrees of any kind is the latest of a series of online pushes in legal education, which has lagged well behind most of higher education when it comes to Web-based graduate programs. Washington Law is not the first to offer an online master’s degree (LL.M.) in U.S. law; the Florida Coastal College of Law [2] has offered one since 2010; the New York University Law School [3], the Loyola University Chicago School of Law [4] and the University of Alabama School of Law [5] offer fully online degrees in specific areas of U.S. law. Along with these pioneers, Washington Law’s decision to create a fully online program, made all the more notable for its vaunted reputation among traditional law schools, might be seen as a bellwether for evolving views on online teaching and learning within a notoriously staid segment of higher education. (This and the previous two paragraphs have been updated since publication.)

The Washington law professors leading the new online program, both of whom considered themselves skeptics only a year ago, say they are convinced now that online education technology has progressed to a point where the quality is independent of whether the seminar discussions happen in a physical classroom or in a virtual one.

“I believe that we’re trying to create extremely high-quality coursework online that is consistent with the quality we give for in-person programs, including the J.D.,” says Kent Syverud, the dean of Washington’s law school, who will be teaching a course within the new online program.

In contrast to the principles of “scalability” on which many online programs are built, the courses in Washington’s online master’s program will be just as cozy as the classroom versions, officials say. There will be no more than 15 students per class, and those students will tune in for “live” discussions, via webcam, at scheduled times. A tech-support staffer from 2tor will monitor each live class session from the company’s offices in Landover, Md., troubleshooting any technical glitches on the fly in hope of making the virtual interactions flow as naturally as they would in the classroom.

Washington faculty will design and teach the courses, and the law school will have full oversight of the curriculum; the courses will run on 2tor’s online learning platform, and the company will be in charge of marketing the program and providing technical support. University officials expect the students who enroll to be practicing lawyers who work for companies that do business in the United States, rather than first-time law students.

The small, synchronous online classes have become a hallmark of 2tor, whose business model is based on running highly specific, production-intensive online programs for a small stable of high-profile clients. (The company’s three other partners are Georgetown University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of Southern California, each of which has devoted office space, decorated with the university’s colors, in the company’s Maryland home.)

That approach jibes with the Socratic method that prevails in legal education and depends on intimate interaction between professors and students, says Melissa Waters, a professor who will direct the online LL.M. program.

“I think a lot of our skepticism early on was grounded in fear that we would lose the joy of teaching and the close relationships that you’re able to build with students in the classroom,” says Waters, who was on a faculty committee that approached the original task of sizing up the possibility of an online LL.M. with a dim view of how compatible such a program might be with Washington law’s standards.

“We had this fear that, if we move online, are we going to lose the best of what we do — both the joy of it and the value of it,” she says. But after seeing how faithfully the online forums are able to capture the energy of a live discussion, Waters was persuaded.

Syverud, the law dean, describes a similar change of heart.

“I think if we can deliver legal instruction online to people at a level of quality that mimics what we’re able to do in the classroom … [then] it’s going to be a change agent over the coming years, even if people don’t want it to be,” he says. “And the best schools are going to face that, and are going to make what they do better in all their degree programs and instruction, and everybody else is going to be left behind.”

Washington’s online law master’s (LL.M.) degree might be a first step down the road toward ABA-approved fully online programs, but it remains uncertain whether it will also be the last step.

While many higher-education accrediting bodies no longer view online education as suspect in itself, the bar association has remained leery of allowing too much distance education into law school curriculums.

The association’s current governing document for approving law schools disqualifies any program that allows students to take more than 12 credit hours via distance education. There is a proposal [6] to increase that threshold to 15 hours per semester as part of a comprehensive review of those standards, but some observers think it unrealistic that the body would approve a fully online J.D. program in the foreseeable future.

Currently the only institution to offer a fully online J.D. programs is Concord Law School, a subsidiary of Kaplan, Inc.

The bar association “will never accredit an exclusively online J.D. program, in my opinion,” says Michael Coyne, associate dean of the Massachusetts School of Law, which has decided not to seek ABA accreditation in favor of petitioning state bar associations to allow its graduates to sit for their exams. (Massachusetts Law, which is not fully online but offers some online programs, is accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, a regional accrediting body.)

Coyne takes the association’s “acquiescence” on Washington law’s new LL.M. degree as lip service to the notion of an increasingly “progressive” stance on online learning. If the ABA did change its mind about distance learning, it would outrage the dozens of law schools in its membership that have invested millions in building a physical infrastructure that satisfies the ABA’s standards, Coyne says. “The maintenance of the status quo is what interests the ABA the most,” he says.

But Waters, the director of Washington’s new online program, says she is sympathetic to the bar association’s reluctance to approve full online degree programs. In times of upheaval, a deliberative approach is not necessarily a bad thing, she says.

“The legal profession, and therefore legal education, is very conservative,” says Waters. “I think that’s a good thing. I don’t think law and legal professors should be at the cutting edge of everything.”

As for the prospect of fully online law doctorates, Waters says she does not expect top law schools, including her own, to come around as swiftly as she and her colleagues did on the online master’s degree.

“We do a great job of educating American lawyers,” she says. “And I think we want to make sure that, if we ever decide to go down that road, we have all our ducks in a row.”

For the latest technology news and opinion from Inside Higher Ed, follow @IHEtech on Twitter.

Online Learning [7]

Source URL: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/05/08/washington-u-law-school-offer-fully-online-degree

Links:
[1] http://law.wustl.edu/news/pages.aspx?id=9182
[2] http://www.fcsl.edu/llm/
[3] http://www.law.nyu.edu/llmjsd/executivellmtax/index.htm?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=llmtax
[4] http://www.luc.edu/healthlaw/degrees/llm/index.html
[5] http://www.law.ua.edu/llmdegrees/
[6] http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/migrated/2011_build/legal_education/committees/standards_review_documents/april2012/20120404_april12_src_meeting_materials.authcheckdam.pdf
[7] http://www.insidehighered.com/news/news-sections/online-learning

Please see the original article here.

Washington University School of Law Goes Online with LL.M. in U.S. Law

schow — Tue, 08 May 2012 09:30:13 +0000

@WashULaw is the first and only top-tier online degree of its kind

ST. LOUIS, MO, May 8, 2012 – Washington University School of Law announced it will begin offering its Master of Laws in U.S. Law for Foreign Lawyers (LL.M.) in a new and innovative online format. Called @WashULaw, the program is the first and only top-tier online LL.M. in U.S. law. The online LL.M. builds on the law school’s internationally recognized postgraduate law degree program, which is designed for foreign attorneys interested in increasing their knowledge of U.S. law to more effectively practice in today’s global legal environment.

@WashULaw will allow foreign lawyers to complete an LL.M. degree in U.S. law without leaving their law practices or relocating to the United States. Students will receive an excellent grounding in U.S. Law, with a focus on business issues, without dramatic disruption to their professional and personal lives or the relocation costs associated with a prolonged stay overseas. @WashULaw provides foreign lawyers with a flexible option to earn their degree from a world leader in legal education and research.

“We aim to produce extraordinary graduates who benefit from the highest caliber online education available – and to ensure that the quality equals or exceeds the quality of the best LL.M. programs in the world,” says Kent Syverud, dean of the Law School and Ethan A.H. Shepley Distinguished University Professor.

The @WashULaw LL.M. program offers students an online version of Washington University School of Law’s on-campus LL.M. curriculum, with:

Courses designed and taught by Washington University law school faculty, who are renowned legal educators and scholars;
Classes of students who meet the same selective admissions criteria as the on-campus graduate law program;
An LL.M. degree identical to the one received by on-campus graduates and the option to attend the campus graduation ceremony;
Intimate classes of no more than 15 students; and
An optional summer immersion in U.S. law experience offered in the U.S. and taught by Washington University faculty.

Delivered through state-of-the-art online technologies, @WashULaw courses will integrate live classroom sessions with streaming video and self-paced content. In live classroom sessions, Washington University law faculty and @WashULaw students will “meet” at pre-arranged times for coursework discussions, study groups and face-to-face office hour meetings. The self-paced content offers students high-quality faculty-designed coursework, highly produced video content and an interactive social technology platform that allows students to chat, study and join communities with classmates and professors 24 hours a day. During the summer, @WashULaw students will be offered an intensive U.S. immersion program in St. Louis, Washington D.C. and other U.S. cities to experience U.S. law from inside U.S. courtrooms and law firms.

@WashULaw is being directed by Melissa Waters, professor of law, and Tomea Mersmann, associate dean for strategic initiatives and lecturer in law. An advisory council is being formed to engage the Washington University School of Law community and thought leaders in education in the development of @WashULaw.

One of the initial advisory council members, Andrew Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants, Inc., is enthusiastic about the opportunities and benefits provided by @WashULaw.

“I have been extremely supportive of this program since day one. I manage our company by the maxim that to survive and prosper, companies must take advantage of current technology and innovate,” says Andrew Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants, Inc. and a member of both the law school’s National Council and the @WashULaw advisory council. “I am proud that my law school is embracing technology, without sacrificing quality, to expand its presence in global legal education.”

Washington University School of Law has partnered with the education technology company 2tor, Inc. to deliver @WashULaw. 2tor partners with leading higher education institutions to deliver rigorous, selective degree programs online by providing the technology platform, instructional design, marketing and infrastructure support.

“We’re honored to add Washington University to the esteemed family of 2tor partners,” says Chip Paucek, co-founder and CEO of 2tor. “We’re thrilled to be working with a school that is pioneering a law program for the 21st century and one that is primed for an increasingly globalized world.”

Education innovation expert Michael B. Horn is also a member of the program’s initial advisory council. Horn is the co-founder and executive director of the education practice of Innosight Institute, a nonprofit think tank devoted to applying the theories of disruptive innovation to solve problems in the social sector.

“It’s exciting that a top-tier law school is taking a leadership role in online learning,” says Michael B. Horn, co-founder and executive director of the education practice of Innosight Institute and @WashULaw advisory board member. “Washington University’s partnership with 2tor is a clear signal that the field of online learning is being invigorated and transformed by top-flight entrants.”

@WashULaw is now accepting applications; classes begin in January 2013. International applicants must first earn a law degree from their home jurisdiction. For more information, visit onlinelaw.wustl.edu, email admissions@onlinelaw.wustl.edu or call 888-WashULW (888-927-4859).

About Washington University School of Law

Washington University School of Law offers students an outstanding legal education in an intellectually challenging and collegial environment. With faculty members recognized for excellent teaching and scholarship, a student body among the most selective in the country, and an increasingly global and diverse community, we strive to prepare graduates for the quickly evolving legal and business environment. @WashULaw is an example of our school’s efforts to innovate using technology and new teaching methods as we pursue our mission to be the best place in the United States to learn to be a lawyer.

About 2tor, Inc.

2tor, Inc. partners with top-tier universities to deliver rigorous, selective graduate programs online. Founded in 2008 by a unique team of education veterans, the company provides universities with the web technologies, infrastructural support and capital needed to compete in a space previously dominated by mediocre online programs. 2tor is one of the highest-funded education technology startups in the United States. The company has partnered with prestigious research universities to deliver the following groundbreaking online degree programs:

USC Rossier Online: Master of Arts in Teaching and Master’s of Education in Advanced Instruction from the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education
MSW@USC: Master of Social Work from the University of Southern California School of Social Work
Nursing@Georgetown: Master’s in Nursing from Georgetown University School of Nursing & Health Studies
MBA@UNC: Master of Business Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School
MPA@UNC: Master of Public Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Government
@WashULaw: Master of Laws (LL.M.) in U.S. Law for Foreign Lawyers from Washington University School of Law.

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Washington University School of Law

Jessica Martin, Law School News Director

jessica_martin@wustl.edu

314-935-5251

2tor, Inc.

Shirley Chow, Public Relations Manager

schow@2tor.com

858-336-0358