Fredericksen named president of OLC board of directors

Eric Fredericksen, associate professor in educational leadership at the Warner School and associate vice president for online learning at the University of Rochester, has been elected new president of the board of directors for the Online Learning Consortium (OLC), effective January 1.

Fredericksen has served on the OLC board since 2012 and was recognized by OLC among its 2013 class of Fellows. He previously served as the board’s vice president. The OLC Board also elected Mary Niemiec, associate vice president of digital education at the University of Nebraska, who succeeds Fredericksen, as its next vice president.

“I am delighted to welcome Dr. Fredericksen and Mary Niemiec as the new officers of OLC’s board or directors, whose guidance will be instrumental in advancing OLC’s strategic agenda,” said OLC CEO and executive director Kathleen Ives.

Fredericksen remarked about the selection, “OLC is the premier professional organization focused on quality digital teaching and learning, and I am excited for the opportunity to serve the OLC community, particularly during this important time in digital higher education.” 

Fredericksen is an experienced educator who has served in leadership roles for online digital learning at three universities. A 2009 alumnus of the Warner School, he has been at the University of Rochester since 2005 and was named to his current position in 2013. Prior to 2005, he held a leadership position at Cornell University, where he focused on the use of contemporary technologies to support teaching and learning, both in and out of the classroom. He also guided the award-winning and innovative SUNY Learning Network, the online program of the State University of New York.  His multi-dimensional perspective as an online student, online professor, leader, and researcher has been invaluable in his ability to guide these endeavors.

For more than two decades, Fredericksen has published and presented collaboratively with his OLC colleagues on the faculty and student experiences in online courses. His latest research on the new leadership roles for online learning has been groundbreaking, and the corresponding Online Learning Journal (OLJ) article, titled “A National Study of Online Learning Leaders in U.S. Higher Education,” has been ranked as the no. 4 top research paper by OLJ and no. 8 top research article by the National Institute for Digital Learning in 2017.

The Online Learning Consortium (OLC) is a collaborative community of higher education leaders and innovators, dedicated to advancing quality digital teaching and learning experiences designed to reach and engage the modern learner – anyone, anywhere, anytime. OLC inspires innovation and quality through an extensive set of resources, including, best-practice publications, quality benchmarking, leading-edge instruction, community-driven conferences, practitioner-based and empirical research and expert guidance. The growing OLC community includes faculty members, administrators, trainers, instructional designers, and other learning professionals, as well as educational institutions, professional societies, and corporate enterprises.