On-Line
First class of 35 students taking “FastTrack” to MLIS degree
By Evan Pattak

Daniel LaValla of Hatfield, Pa., and Randi Kepecs of Ithaca, N.Y., were on campus last week as students of FastTrack, a new School of Information Sciences program that offers the master’s degree in library and information science on-line. Students are required to be on campus for a week in the middle of their first semester, and for one weekend every semester thereafter for the duration of the two-year program.

Randi Kepecs of Ithaca, N.Y., is a mother of two who has worked primarily in fund-raising, following completion of her undergraduate degree in historic preservation and urban planning.

Daniel LaValla, of the eastern Pennsylvania town of Hatfield, is library director for the Biblical Theological Seminary, with an undergraduate degree in social work.

What unites them is their pursuit of the master’s degree in library and information science through the University of Pittsburgh’s pioneering on-line program. Kepecs and LaValla are members of the inaugural class of FastTrack, as the program is known, which welcomed its first students in May. The program is ambitious yet already so successful that the Department of Library and Information Science and Toni Carbo, dean of the School of Information Sciences (SIS), are planning expansion of the curriculum. Even more significantly, Tomer anticipates the 2003 introduction of two new degree tracks, archives and records management, and medical information, expansion expected to significantly broaden FastTrack’s community of learners. MORE ...