Major universities seeing surge of interest in free online classes, including Pitt's nuclear engineering program

FROM THE PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE

By Bill Schackner / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

In a makeshift production studio at the University of Pittsburgh, adjunct professor Larry Foulke is speaking passionately into a camera, preparing his online course, "A Look at Nuclear Science and Technology," for the masses.

So animated is his delivery in front of a video crew recording his lecture, it's as if he is speaking face-to-face to his class. But chances are nil that he will ever meet most of his students, and even if he did, there would not be enough time to greet them all.

That's because nearly 12,000 people in the United States and abroad already have signed up via the Internet for a course that does not start until June, both because of the topic and the professor, a well-known nuclear industry retiree who is interim director of Pitt's nuclear engineering program and past president of the American Nuclear Society.

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