(1888PressRelease)
June 22, 2009 - Global Academy Online, Inc., the premier provider of private label content and qualified faculty to teach online college courses announced today their decision to fund University Builders Online, a Cleveland non-profit 501c3 veterans charitable organization dedicated to developing non-profit online and hybrid universities. The contribution from the Academy and private benefactors is expected to top five million dollars.
Dr. Fred DiUlus, the CEO and Founder of Global Academy Online Inc, has taken the reins as the first Executive Director of University Builders Online. Originally formed in 2008 by a group of dedicated Cleveland professionals as well as Global Academy Online principals, including DiUlus, University Builders became one of the prime suitors for the former 160-year-old Myers University of Cleveland. At the time, the school, the alleged alma mater of legendary entrepreneurs John D. Rockefeller and Henry Firestone, was under the control of a County Court appointed Special Master for liquidation to the highest bidder.
Unable to rest control of the non-profit school away from a for-profit organization, University Builders set out to create a not-for-profit charitable organization that would permit the development and funding of non profit schools to compete for students amid a sea of profit driven higher education providers and education conglomerate Pac Men; a reference DiUlus makes to the one-time popular video game where Pac Men gobbled up everything in sight. Rather than take over an ailing or marginal school, he notes, University Builders will provide instead the ability for non-profit school organizers to fund, develop, staff, and administer, accredited online and hybrid universities (a 50% combination of on-ground and online delivery) dedicated to education, not profits.
University Builders first effort is “The Ohio Project”. It is the first non-profit university being created in Ohio in a hundred years. The plan according to DiUlus is to fill the void left by the demise of the non-profit Myers University as it morphed into a for profit entity.
Over the past ten years, Dr. DiUlus has been instrumental in the creation and development of several established online education organizations. Among them are an online school of entrepreneurship, an online certification program in applied ethics, and an online tuition free university, all the first of their kind. He was also behind the creation of the “Billion Dollar Project”, an online charity singularly dedicated to helping stamp out ignorance in the world. He says “University Builders is the quintessential demonstrator of how that can be done.”
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