Penn State's College of Education is regularly ranked among the nation's best graduate schools by U.S. News & World Report, and the certificate program in distance education is taught by the same nationally recognized faculty.
Gary William Kuhne, D.Ed.
Lead faculty member, M.Ed. in Adult Education and Distance Education Certificate
As lead faculty member, Dr. Kuhne provides both coordination and direction for the use of web-based learning and asynchronous learning for the delivery of graduate-level education. He is also an active consultant to nonprofit, corporate, and government agencies on issues linked to staff development, continuing professional education, human resource development, action research, and distance education. Dr. Kuhne is the author of eight books and numerous articles and reports.
Melody M. Thompson, D.Ed.
Areas of Interest:
- Distance Education Policy and Practice
- Social and Historical Issues in Adult Education
- Adult Education for Diverse Populations
Melody M. Thompson is associate professor of education in Penn State's Adult Education Program. In that role she teaches and advises masters' and doctoral students, with much of her teaching being done online through the Penn State World Campus. Her primary research interests include the ethical dimensions of online learning, and diversity issues in adult education, especially those related to religious identity. Dr. Thompson received her bachelor's degree in English from Bryn Mawr College and both her M.Ed. and D.Ed. from Penn State. Her past positions include director of planning and research for the World Campus and director of the American Center for the Study of Distance Education (ACSDE). She has also served as the U.S. project leader for the e-Learning Collaborative Research Project of the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) and as the faculty satisfaction editor for the Sloan Consortium's Effective Practices database. Dr. Thompson is the author of numerous articles and book chapters, as well as co-author of the McGraw-Hill Handbook of Distance Learning.
Dr. Thompson's honors include the 2003 Sloan Consortium Best Practices in Faculty Satisfaction Award, the 2004 American Distance Education Consortium (ADEC) Outstanding Educational Program Award, and the 2010 University Continuing Education Association (UCEA) Excellence in Teaching Award.
Francis Dwyer, DEd
Dr. Dwyer, professor of instructional systems, received his doctorate in educational administration from Penn State. His current interests are corporate training, performance technology, and visual learning. Dr. Dwyer has served as president of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) and the International Visual Literacy Association (IVLA). He has conducted numerous studies regarding visual learning, resulting in the publication of four texts directly related to the design and use of visualization in the instructional/training process.
Michael Grahame Moore, PhD
Before joining the program in 1986, Dr. Moore worked for nine years at the British Open University. Prior to that, he was involved in adult education in Kenya and Canada. He is the founder and editor of The American Journal of Distance Education and has served on the editorial boards of similar journals. He takes special interest in adult and distance education in developing countries, undertaking various research and occasional training projects for the World Bank, IMF, and UNESCO.