The Office of Undergraduate Programs’ mission is to help students achieve their fullest academic potential and to foster their intellectual, professional, and personal growth. We do this by encouraging students to make informed decisions on the basis of their individual interests, abilities, values, and goals. Our goal is for our students to become self-directed learners and decision makers as well as leaders in the IST and Penn State communities. The most visible component of the Office of Undergraduate Programs is the IST Undergraduate Advising Center at University Park. Although our academic counselors are primarily responsible for freshmen and sophomores enrolled in IST at University Park, we also provide academic counseling to anyone enrolled in the college both at University Park as well as throughout the Penn State system and to anyone interested in IST programs regardless of college of enrollment.

Online IST is the Solutions Institute’s core initiative and sets the Institute apart as the leading developer of integrated eLearning opportunities. Based on a custom instructional design and development methodology developed by the Director of the Institute, the Online IST project has reached over 8,620 students. The entire online curriculum is supported by the Digital Design Document (D3), a custom, database-driven content management tool that facilitates content creation, collection, instructional design, team-based collaboration for designers and developers, and flexible course publishing.