It’s hard to imagine a time when email didn’t exist at Cornell, but Charles W. Jermy Jr. remembers. The former dean began his career in 1972 in what was then the Division of Summer Session and Extramural Courses.

As the director at that time of the Advanced Placement Program (now Precollege Studies), Jermy’s team received thousands of postcards with requests for information. Each reply had to be hand-typed and mailed back, requiring countless of hours of labor. Fast forward a couple of decades, and the division—now the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions (SCE)—became one of the first Cornell entities to embrace email and provide distance learning opportunities to students around the world.

“Cornell has always been ahead of the technology curve,” Jermy said. “In fact, Bill Gates on a visit to Cornell recognized how essential the internet would be to Microsoft’s future when he saw how many people here were using email to communicate.” Later, that technology, paired with a suitcase of VHS tapes, would enable SCE to offer the first distance-learning credit classes at Cornell.

From those early years to Jermy’s retirement in February, innovation has been the thread that’s kept him interested in and passionate about his work with SCE.

“My PhD studies were in innovation, and so I was looking at the ways universities and colleges in general were thinking about doing that. All of a sudden, I’d landed in a place where I could actually test out those ideas.”

Jermy, who was honored with the title of Senior Associate Dean of the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions Emeritus in April for his extraordinary service to Cornell, is delighted that his boldest proposal has been taken up by the University and SCE’s new dean, Mary Loeffelholz: A part-time online bachelor’s degree for nontraditional students...

Read the full story on the SCE News site.