Vice President for Continuing Studies and Distance Education

Dr. Richard Novak has been with the Division of Continuing Studies (formerly the Division of Continuous Education and Outreach) since its inception in July 1996 and has served as Vice President since 2013. He has been engaged with online learning at Rutgers since 1997.
He is also an associate member of the graduate faculty in the Rutgers Graduate School of Education, teaching face-to-face, hybrid and fully online courses beginning in 1993. Dr. Novak is Past-President of the University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA), the principal US organization for professional and continuing higher education. He continues to serve in various leadership roles with UPCEA.
As the Vice President for the Division of Continuing Studies (DoCS), Dr. Novak provides executive leadership for a large and diverse University-wide division at Rutgers University that includes over 140 employees in 20 distinct units at 20 different locations, that coordinate hundreds of credit and non-credit programs, enrolling thousands of participants, reaching audiences from pre-school youth to retirees, on and off campus and online, and providing various support services to faculty, staff and students across the University. In addition, DoCS operates the University Inn and Conference Center and iTV, the University’s high definition broadcast television studio.
In 2004, Dr. Novak was presented the Walton S. Bittner Service Citation for Imaginative Leadership in the Advancement of Continuing Education and Distinguished Service to the Association by UPCEA. In April 2011 he was awarded the national Excellence in Online Administration award.
Richard Novak has been the Associate Vice President for Continuing Studies and Distance Learning at Rutgers University since 1991. He has also served as an adjunct graduate faculty member for the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations as well as in the university’s Graduate School of Education. Novak has also held the role of Director of Special Projects in Rutgers Office of Academic Affairs since 2009. He established and directs the Center for Online & Hybrid Learning and Instructional Technologies (COHLIT) at Rutgers. Novak was the President of the University Professional Continuing Education Association (UPCEA) in 2007-2008. He served as the Regional Chair for the Mid-Atlantic Region of UPCEA in 2002-2003. He served as a member of the Board of Directors for UPCEA from 2003- AUTHOR PROFILE 2009.