George Otte

In a previous life I was an [English] professor and a director of writing programs. In the late nineties, while still at [Baruch College], I served Baruch College’s Executive Director of Enrichment Programs, which included presiding over high school outreach and communication-across-the-curriculum programs. Appointed a member of the doctoral faculty at the [CUNY Graduate Center] in the mid-nineties (originally in [English],later in  [Urban Education] and [Interactive Technology & Pedagogy]), I was co-editor of the [Journal of Basic Writing] from 1996-2002. In 2006, I became Academic Director of the [CUNY Online Baccalaureate], CUNY’s first fully online degree, and since have been kicked upstairs to become the chief academic officer of the CUNY [School of Professional Studies] (SPS), where that online degree is one of many — currently six Master’s and ten Bachelor’s. (Those undergrad degrees were in the top 8% nationally by US News & World Report in its most recent ranking of online Bachelor’s degrees.) In 2008, when I became CAO of SPS, I was also named University Director of Academic Technology for CUNY, a modulation in the title of CUNY Director of Instructional Technology, a position I’ve held since 2001. That title reflects a lot of interests, chief among them [academic technology], [online instruction] and [blended learning], [digital scholarship], and [computer-mediated communication].