CHARLESTON, W.Va. – A grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Distance Learning and Telemedicine grant program is positioned to expand online learning opportunities for adults in West Virginia seeking to complete a Regents Bachelor of Arts (RBA) degree. Through the $499,991 grant, which was awarded to the West Virginia Network (WVNET), students will be able to participate in live video classes from the convenience of their laptop or tablet using a web conferencing system.

“We have placed an increased emphasis in West Virginia on helping adult learners complete postsecondary education,” said Dr. Paul Hill, Chancellor of the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission. “Nearly 20 percent of adults in West Virginia have some college credits but no degree. There can be an array of roadblocks for adult students, but with flexible options through distance learning, we can help them succeed.”

Currently, RBA students can complete online components of a course at a time and place of their choosing, in addition to attending classes in person. Through this grant, the West Virginia Remote Online Collaborative Knowledge System (WVROCKS) will launch a hybrid model for distance education by including synchronous video classes – making courses that require labs or discussion available online and accessible across the state.

WVROCKS, an initiative of the Commission, is a statewide portal designed to facilitate the completion of the RBA degree, providing students with flexible options for enrolling in online, condensed, upper-division courses through the state’s public institutions.

The AMLIGHT collaboration includes: The Academic Network or Sao Paulo (ANSP), The National Network of Brazil (RNP), The National Network of Chile (REUNA), The Regional Network for Latin America (CLARA), and The Center for Internet Augmented Research and Assessment (CIARA) at Florida International University (FIU).

Miami, Florida, November 12, 2014 –Florida International University’s Center for Internet Augmented Research and Assessment (CIARA) is pleased to announce AMLIGHT’s long-term support for a high-speed network, linking the NSF-funded Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) to the National Center for SuperComputing Applications (NCSA) and beyond through a sub-award from the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA). This unprecedented long-term infrastructure will provide committed bandwidth capacity for LSST’s explicit needs, and communal bursts within the AMLIGHT collaboration.

The network architecture is a critical component of the design of LSST.  AMLIGHT has contributed to the design of the network architecture for LSST, and supported the evolution of the regional network infrastructure since site planning in 2006. The network architecture allows for a design of LSST utilizing the computational resources of NCSA in Illinois to process in near real time the data from the telescope in Northern Chile.

The AMLIGHT collaboration will deploy multiple 100G links from Miami, to Fortaleza, Brazil, to São Paulo, and to Santiago, Chile, to provide the underlying infrastructure to support LSST’s committed bandwidth, and burst needs. Partners in the U.S. that interconnect with AMLIGHT and will help transport LSST’s data to NCSA include Florida LambdaRail, Internet2, and ESnet.

This commitment to international network-enabled major research instruments creates an exciting new frontier for U.S. and collaborative science. The LSST will be able to look throughout the Universe, and within seconds, relying on AMLIGHT, deliver images of distant stars and galaxies to NCSA, where they are processed and made ready for science.

LSST’s construction funding will be provided through NSF’s Major Research Equipment and Facilities (MREFC) account. LSST passed its NSF Final Design Review in December of 2013; the National Science Board gave the NSF conditional approval to move the project to construction status in May of 2014. NSF issued a new CSA for LSST Construction to AURA in August of 2014 initiating the formal NSF LSST Construction Project. On the DOE side, LSST received Critical Decision-1 approval (CD-1) in 2011 and also just received CD-3a approval, which allows the project to move forward with the sensor long-lead procurements. The CD-2 review will take place the first week in November, with approval expected shortly afterward, formally fixing the baseline budget for completion of the camera project. The Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (P5), an advisory subpanel of the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP), recommended in May of 2014 that DOE move forward with LSST under all budget scenarios, even the most pessimistic.