Located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of northwestern North Carolina, Appalachian State University has built a national reputation for academic excellence. Faculty members—who enjoy ASU's student/faculty ratio of 17:1 and average class size of 24—are able to take a personal interest in student progress, often becoming mentors, advisers, and friends. That can only happen in a close-knit community.

Appalachian offers more than 140 undergraduate and graduate programs and is committed to equality of opportunity. The university is fully accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

ASU feels a special responsibility to the Appalachian region and seeks to contribute to the understanding, appreciation, and preservation of its unique culture.

Points of pride

• Appalachian placed fourth among the South's top public universities and ninth among the South's public and private universities in U.S. News & World Report's 2009 America's Best Colleges Guide.

• Appalachian is ranked 29th in the nation in Kiplinger magazine’s 2008-09 list of the top 100 values in public colleges and universities in the nation. The ranking is based on the in-state cost of attending the university. 

• An Appalachian Summer Festival, the university's annual summer arts celebration, has been named one of the top twenty events in the Southeast by the Southeast Tourism Society for more than a decade.

• The Institute of International Education recognized Appalachian as one of the nation's top fifteen comprehensive universities in the number of undergraduates taking part in international education programs.

• The Reich College of Education has the largest undergraduate teacher preparation program in North Carolina and is consistently ranked near or at the top of all programs preparing teachers in the state.

• Appalachian’s Adult Basic Skills Professional Development Project (ABSPD) institutes impact over 8,000 Adult Basic Skills (literacy) instructors annually.

• More than $15 million in research grants and contracts was awarded to the university in 2007-08.

• Appalachian's GEAR UP program works to accelerate the academic achievement of middle and secondary school students in surrounding counties, so that increasing numbers will graduate from high school and enroll and succeed in college. 

• The Appalachian and the Community Together (ACT) office provided an estimated $1.85 million of volunteer service to the community during the 2007-08 school year.

The Reich College of Education at Appalachian State University has a long and rich tradition of preparing students to enter the public schools and other agencies of North Carolina as well as the region.

The beginning of the Reich College of Education can be traced to Watauga Academy founded in 1899 by B. B. Dougherty for the single purpose of training teachers. From that humble beginning emerged the comprehensive institution now known as Appalachian State University. The Reich College of Education is named after Ed and Lois Reich. As a result of their generosity, an endowment of over one million dollars was established which supports a substantial number of scholarships for students preparing to enter the teaching profession.

The Reich College of Education is the designated professional education unit at Appalachian State University. Its mission is to offer high quality educational experiences that lead to Bachelor's, Master's, Educational Specialist's and Doctoral degrees, as well as programs leading to specific certificates and licenses. We prepare traditional and non-traditional candidates to assume positions as:

• Teachers and administrators for public schools K-12
• Administrators and faculty for community colleges, and four year colleges and universities
• School psychologists and counselors for public schools, community colleges, universities, and community human services agencies
• Speech and hearing therapists for hospitals, public schools, community clinics, colleges, and universities
• Librarians for public schools, community colleges, and community libraries
• Media and technology specialists for public schools, community colleges, and four year colleges and universities

Although the college has as a major part of its mission the preparation of teachers, it is a diversified unit with other highly acclaimed programs as well. Among those are the Communications Disorders program, multiple programs in Counseling, and a variety of programs in Higher Education, School Administration, Library Science, Technology, and Educational Leadership. Central to all of our programs, however, is our conceptual framework. This framework is knowledge-based, reflects current research, and its overall philosophy and purpose provide a rationale for our coursework, field and clinical experiences.

Our framework reflects the current literature on the social nature of learning and is based on a "community of practice" model of teaching and learning which offers multicultural and global perspectives.

The Reich College of Education Conceptual Framework provides a broad description of how we believe people learn and develop, and how teaching, and other helping oriented interactions should occur. We envision graduates of our programs as thoughtful professionals, characterized by a love of learning and by the capacity to adapt to change. Such professionals reflect upon the moral and ethical nature of their work, and take seriously the public trust placed in them. Our goal is to develop highly competent professionals who make knowledgeable and ethically justifiable decisions concerning what is best for their students and clients.

The five principles that together constitute the RCOE Conceptual Framework include:

• Learning occurs through participation in a Community of Practice;
• Knowledge is socially constructed and learning is a dynamic activity within a Community of Practice;
• Learners proceed through stages of development from Novice to Expert under the guidance of more experienced and knowledgeable mentors in the Community of Practice;
• An identifiable Knowledge Base that is both general in nature and also specific to specialties emerges from the Community of Practice;
• All educators and human service professionals develop a set of Dispositions reflecting attitudes, beliefs, and values common to the Community of Practice.
  
  For more information about Appalachian State University’s School of Education, click here.

   

   

Since the 1950's Appalachian has been providing educational programs to North Carolina residents at sites away from main campus. The programs were primarily at the graduate level until 1999, when the state of North Carolina began funding distance education. Today, in addition to delivering courses to over 80 off-campus undergraduate and graduate cohorts at various locations in western North Carolina, Appalachian offers fully online programs in the areas of New Media and Global Education, Online Teaching, and Gerontology.

Many of our distance education students have family, work, and other responsibilities that may not allow them to come to our campus regularly because of schedule, location, or time limitations. Distance education helps to fulfill ASU's mission by offering certificates and degree programs that meet the needs of a diverse group of students. Our faculty members are committed to serving your learning needs and can be reached by email, fax, phone, or other web-based technologies. For online programs, most of your learning takes place at a place convenient for you—including your personal computer—although, depending on the program, you may be required occasionally to come to a location for an exam or laboratory exercise.

For answers to many questions that you may have, click here.

For more information contact the Office of Extension and Distance Education at 800-355-4084.