Videoconferencing links campuses
with experts at remote sites

Distance education courses offered through the LBJ School are allowing students in Austin to listen to lectures made in Washington, D.C., by members of Congress, executive branch officials, and other distinguished speakers. The interactive videoconference link also allows students enrolled in campuses in other Texas cities and outside the state to participate in these classes.

Located in the School’s Wasserman Media Room, the distance learning site has been in operation since fall 2001, when the equipment in the room was upgraded to allow videoconferencing. Until then, classes that required distance learning technology met in other buildings on campus or at the Texas Department of Health.

This spring, three LBJ School courses—the most ever offered using this technology—have been presented via videoconferencing. The courses, all elective seminars focusing on topics in public policy, have linked students, faculty members, and visiting lecturers who are located in Texas, Washington, D.C., and Indiana.

The classes are “Perspectives on Public Policy,” taught by Distinguished Adjunct Professor Charls E. Walker and Admiral Bobby R. Inman, the LBJ Centennial Chair in National Policy; “Politics and Policies in an Aging Population,” by LBJ School Professor Jacqueline L. Angel; and “Texas Health Policy,” by LBJ School Professor David C. Warner and Professor Charles E. Begley of the UT Health Science Center (UTHSC) in Houston.

The course taught by Walker and Inman is offered jointly by several leading universities and the Washington Campus, a nonprofit consortium of universities located in the nation’s capital. Walker is considered one of the country’s foremost authorities on economic and tax policy. His wide experience in the public and private sectors include service as deputy secretary of the Treasury in the Nixon and Eisenhower administrations and as head of the Washington tax lobbying firm Charls E. Walker & Associates. Inman, who served in the U.S. Navy for 30 years and retired with the permanent rank of admiral, served as director of the National Security Agency and deputy director of central intelligence. Lecturers include current and former members of Congress, executive branch officials, lobbyists, and other participants in the federal political system.

The “Perspectives in Public Policy” course is cross-listed in the LBJ School, Law School, and McCombs School of Business. Students from Purdue University and Texas A&M University are also enrolled.

Angel’s course is open to all UT Austin graduate students as well as students at the UTHSC campus in San Antonio. These include medical students in the UTHSC-San Antonio pediatrics program and residents in family practice. The seminar is a topical elective at the LBJ School and the UT Austin Sociology Department. It is also a core course in the UT Graduate Studies interdisciplinary doctoral and master’s portfolio programs in gerontology. Last fall, Angel taught another distance learning class for UTHSC-San Antonio students called “Politics of Health and Long-Term Care.”

Warner’s course links UT Austin students with UTHSC students from the center’s Houston and San Antonio campuses who are enrolled in the School of Public Health.

Last fall, Warner and Nuria Homedes, an associate professor at the UT School of Public Health in El Paso, also taught a real-time distance learning class entitled “U.S.-Mexico Border Health Issues.” The class included students in El Paso, Harlingen, and Austin. Several of the El Paso students were Mexican physicians working in Ciudad Juárez.

The Wasserman Media Room, where the distance learning classes take place, was part of the Edie and Lew Wasserman Public Affairs Library until 1995 when UT Austin General Libraries handed it over to the LBJ School. The Media Room was constructed as part of a major library remodeling project that took place in 1986. Both the Media Room and the Public Affairs Library are named for the Wassermans, who donated funds in 1983 for library automation improvements.

Record Home • Publications • LBJ School
May 5, 2003
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