by Keith L. Martin | Staff Writer
On an average weekday, Rani Kota rises at 4:30 a.m., commutes from her home in Frederick to work in Bethesda, sometimes stops in Germantown at her daughter’s day care, then wraps up her day at 9 p.m., with one final destination in mind - Minnesota.
Enrolled in two courses at Minnesota-based Walden University, Kota is one of the growing number of working mothers who uses the Internet to further her education while balancing a career and raising a family. Kota is working toward a Master of Public Health degree, and is on track to earn it in December.
‘‘I chose online classes because I can spend time with my family and work full-time and those were my main priorities,” said Kota, a two-year Frederick resident. ‘‘... With new technology, anyone can do it if they are willing to and can find a balance.”
Providing solid courses with accessible support is crucial to success in online education, especially with working mothers, according to Jurgen Hilke, director of distance learning for Frederick Community College.
‘‘It is absolutely essential,” Hilke said. ‘‘It is a lifeline and the online environment gives access for students who normally do not have access to higher education.”
Hilke joined the college’s staff in 1981 as an adjunct professor and offered its first online class, ‘‘Introduction to Sociology,” in 1998. Three years later, he was named director of the college’s online education program.
This semester, the college offers more than 100 courses in its general education and business administration programs, some exclusively online and some hybrids incorporating on-campus time with computer-based instruction to about 4,000 students.
Research at the college shows the online student population is 70 percent female, Hilke said, with working mothers comprising a majority of that group. Women have a success rate of between 81 and 84 percent, depending on semester, a little lower than the success rate of classroom-based instruction of 83 to 85 percent, according to FCC research.
Kota admits her stability comes with a lot of help from her husband of nearly a decade, Prabhakar Athota, and her mother, who often travels from her home in Silver Spring to help care for Kota’s daughters Preethi, 7, and Anusha, 3. She is equally as thankful for her Christian faith, saying a prayer each night as she flips open her laptop for a few hours of class three times a week between 9 p.m. and midnight.
In 1998, Kota received her bachelor’s degree in biology and chemistry from Columbia Union College in Takoma Park before marrying and starting a family. Working as a patient care coordinator at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Kota decided nearly three years ago to go back to school for a master’s degree to seek a career in public health.
Choosing to go online versus on-campus, Kota researched several universities before selecting Walden.
‘‘Walden is a great school with a lot of support,” she said. ‘‘... The teacher-student interaction is very fast and if I e-mail a question at night, it is usually answered the next morning.”
A Frederick Community College 2007 survey of 100 students who withdrew from online classes shows that the same reasons for taking the classes – heavy workload and family commitments – were also equally as significant in dropping the course altogether, Hilke said.
‘‘By selecting online courses for these reasons, they actually increase the risk [of withdrawing],” he said.
To combat that, Hilke said Frederick Community College has both on-campus and online support elements for students, including an online writing center to assist with written assignments accessible via e-mail.
Strong support for all online students, especially working mothers, is also recognized nationally by eLearners.com, an Internet database of online college courses.
The company recently introduced ‘‘Project Working Mom,” an online resource offering course selection, guides to financing further education and an online forum for moms to chat with one another.
‘‘Through our online forums [at eLearners.com], we got to know who our users were and how balancing life, family and getting ahead were a common thread in individual stories,” said Terrence Thomas, chief marketing officer for the company. ‘‘We learned about the lives and the three big challenges of time, money and confidence that kept these women from returning to school.”
In a partnership with Walden, DeVry and American Intercontinental universities, Project Working Mom is helping to eliminate these barriers by offering $2 million in full scholarships for working moms who want to enroll in one of the three colleges’ programs.
For more on Project Working Mom, visit www.projectworkingmom.com.
