Burks Oakley II – Introduction

Burks Oakley II is a Visiting Research Professor at the University of Illinois at Springfield (UIS) and a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).  He also works as a consultant with the Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C).  From 1997 until 2007, Oakley served as the Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of Illinois.  During that time, he also served as the director of the University of Illinois Online initiative, a program designed to facilitate the development and delivery of University of Illinois courses and degrees over the Internet. 

Through his innovative use of educational technologies and the Internet in teaching, Professor Oakley has earned a national reputation as a practitioner and promoter of online learning.  In the past six years, he has given more than two hundred invited talks at national conferences and on university campuses.  He has been the principal investigator (PI) or co-PI on over $10 million in grants (including matching funds) to the University of Illinois in support of online educational initiatives.

Oakley received his B.S. degree from Northwestern University and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan.  He has received numerous awards for his teaching and for his innovative use of technology in education, including the Luckman Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award from UIUC in 1993, the Outstanding Teacher Award from the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) in 1993, the Educom Medal in 1996, the Educational Activities Board Major Educational Innovation Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 1996, the Third Millennium Medal from the IEEE in 2000, the Engineering Alumni Society Merit Award from the University of Michigan in 2003, and the Sloan-C Award for the “Most Outstanding Achievement in Online Teaching and Learning by an Individual” in 2003.  Oakley is a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the ASEE, and a former Vice President of the ASEE.