Anderson College (www.ac.edu), a small Liberal Arts Institution in northwestern South Carolina, will celebrate an anniversary in January, as it reaches the one-year mark for its Criminal Justice Program. Only a few months after it launched, Anderson added to its newest offering by taking the program online.

“Our criminal justice program is designed primarily for those who have an associate degree in criminal justice; it’s a completion program,” described Dr. David Shirley, Director of Adult Education. With 14 two-year colleges in South Carolina offering associate degrees in criminal justice, Dr. Shirley explained, “We saw a need and thought that our Criminal Justice Program provided the best option.”

The Criminal Justice Program is relatively small, with 35 students enrolled, but Anderson realized a further need among the criminal justice world to make its program available to a wider audience. Therefore, Anderson contracted Learning House, Inc. (www.learninghouse.com) to translate the program to online learning. Dr. Shirley had been referred to Dr. Denzil Edge, President of Learning House, Inc., by a friend, and around the same time happened to meet Dr. Edge while he visited the Anderson College campus.

Both the on-campus and online Criminal Justice Program have received “very good” feedback from faculty and students, said Dr. Shirley. Anderson College is looking forward to expanding their online offerings in the future, taking other areas of Anderson to the realm of distance learning.