Professor earns seed money funding

La Verne Abe Harris, an assistant professor of graphic information technology in the College of Science and Technology at ASU, has been awarded the 2006-2007 ASU Foundation Women and Philanthropy Excellence and Access Award in the amount of $33,000 for seed money for her IDeaLaboratory in the Polytechnic campus.

Part of the funding will be used to buy video and online equipment, and software for the creation of virtual laboratory prototypes. These will be used for online education and as a supplement to face-to-face courses.

The enrollment of online students at ASU is expected to increase substantially in the next decade, from 20,000 to 100,000. Online curriculum offers one potential solution to the increasing demand for higher education access.

Harris is the director of the IDeaLaboratory, a creative problem-solving, information design and usability engineering studio on the Polytechnic campus. She also is co-director of the online master's degree in technology.