Erika Mallory, 26, works 40 hours a week in Ashland and has two kids at her home in Medford. She’s also a full-time student at Southern Oregon University thanks to the university’s online course offerings.

"I’m taking 12 credits and there’s no way I could do that face-to-face," Mallory said, who takes classes via the Internet. "I can do school when the kids sleep."

Mallory works at SOU’s Medford campus and she’s studying toward a degree in business management, with a minor in criminology. She hopes to head to law school after earning her bachelor’s degree in 2006.

SOU plans to increase its online offerings this fall so students like Mallory can finish business and criminology degrees entirely online.

The university’s degree-completion program serves people with associate’s degrees or some college who want to earn a bachelor’s degree while still working. It has offered a smattering of online classes for five years, but this fall it will start providing its entire business and criminology programs over the Internet.

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Joan McBee, coordinator of the business degree-completion program, said student interest in online classes has grown in the past five years and she wanted to offer the entire program over the Internet for students interested in tapping technology to finish their education.

The criminology and criminal justice program chose to provide all its courses online to fit the busy schedules of people working in law enforcement, said Angela Huftill, SOU’s director of distance learning.

"This is about access," Huftill said. "We wanted to reach out to the region."

It’s the kind of access appreciated by people like Angela Baker, 33, a state parole and probation officer in Roseburg. This fall, she’ll be among the first SOU students to begin earning a criminology degree entirely online.

She’ll earn her associate’s degree in June from Umpqua Community College, but had feared she couldn’t balance the next step in her education with her life as a single mom of two teenage girls and her job supervising criminal offenders.

"This is so needed for people stuck in the middle," Baker said, noting that the drive to SOU in Ashland or University of Oregon in Eugene was too far.

SOU is marketing its online programs in Northern California, on the Oregon Coast and north to Roseburg. The business program includes face-to-face interaction between students and professors that can be done at the school’s Medford campus or via teleconference equipment at community colleges throughout the region. The criminology program, which relies entirely on the Internet, has a farther reach and hopes to attract people in the military serving worldwide, program coordinator Jeannie Azzopardi said.

Online courses cost $170 per credit, slightly more than the $125 per credit charged at SOU’s Medford campus, where the same courses are offered. The higher fee covers course development and technology costs, McBee said. Financial aid is available for students accepted to the program.

Online students use the same curriculum, have the same professors and progress at the same pace as students in traditional classrooms, she said. Making courses available through the Internet, however, gives students more flexibility so some can finish their degrees faster, said Azzopardi, who took a combination of online and on-campus classes to finish a double major in criminology and writing in 3½ years. Working all those classes into an on-campus schedule would have required five years or longer, she said.

Presentation offered on Internet classes

The workshop is open to anyone interested in returning to college and will include information about online and on-campus programs for working adults. For information call 552-5388.

Reach reporter Anita Burke at 776-4485, or e-mail aburke@mailtribune.com