The Mouse that Roars: American College of Applied Sciences launches new Web sites

January 21, 2008 – Crescent City, FL USA - The American College of Applied Science (ACAS), a Florida-based private college specializing in companion animal science and behavior programs for adult learners, celebrated its third birthday this month with its new Web site at http://amcollege.us and its Virtual Campus located at http://amcollege.net . Nestled on a 20-acre nature reserve on a lake with wandering llamas, horses, miniature donkeys, sheep, ducks, guinea hens, dogs, alligators, and a wolf hybrid named Darwin; this is no ordinary college campus. The college offers unique and often one-of-a-kind graduate, undergraduate and professional development programs in animal behavior counseling, animal shelter administration and dog training and cares via online courses and local academic residencies to students as nearby as Florida and as far away as Iceland, Israel and Taiwan.

What is equally unique about this school is that unlike most of its competitors in distance education higher learning who have spent untold amounts of money to set up a Web presence and a distance education course management system (CMS), ACAS did this for pennies on the dollar. The college went to open source software solutions like the Drupal content management system and the Moodle course management software with free downloads and turn-key installations. Best of all, once it's installed and running its there's to keep forever- with no annual licensing fees. “We started this college on a shoe-string budget,” says Robert DeFranco, the ACAS president who once ran a New York City animal shelter and is now completing his Ph.D. in academic psychology at Walden University, the oldest online accredited university in the U.S. He mortgaged his homes and properties to start up the college in 2005 and just turned profitable this past quarter. “We wanted to deliver academic and professional programs to people who love animals and want to work with them but cannot leave their jobs and lifestyles to go away to study. I knew the answer for us was distance learning since I was a Walden student however, the challenge was how to pay for the development of a sophisticated Web site for attracting and servicing students and the start-up fees and annual licensing of commercial CMS software offered by a handful of vendors like Blackboard and e-College.  “When they told me what it would cost to set up and run my tiny online campus, I nearly dropped the phone.”

To save additional start-up costs, ACAS went to India to Elixir Web Solutions for much of the web development and programming. “We placed an ad on Guru.com and got dozens of bids for our projects. We chose New Delhi based Elixir and have found them to be extraordinarily competent, professional, cost effective and assessable when you need them” says DeFranco. “U.S. Web developers came in at 5 times the cost and when you are a little fish, you can never get them on the phone.” The college IT staff uses Windows Live Messenger and Vonage long distance telephone service to communicate daily about development and maintenance issues.  As for their Web servers, ACAS once owned and operated their own servers but now has gone to shared hosting. “I love the GoDaddy.com people and they are extremely cost effective.  I saw their ad on the Super Bowl one year and was an instant customer when I found their customer support to be highly professional and 24/7/365. If we have a problem at 3:00 am on Sunday morning, they pick up the phone and find a solution. We cannot afford to have our classrooms down so this level of service is imperative as well as cost effective. Now if we can only find a solution to stop the llamas from eating the young palm tree ferns here on the animal reserve.”

The American College of Applied Science is licensed by the State of Florida, Department of Education to offer graduate, undergraduate and professional development programs in the field of companion animal science and behavior analysis. For more information, visit their web sites at http://amcollege.us and http://amcollege.net or phone 800-403-DEGREE (3347).