Past President and CEO of the American Distance Education Consortium (ADEC) and the founding/first president of ADEC; Professor Emeritus at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, a Sloan Consortium Fellow and member of the Executive Committee of the Sloan Consortium Board of Directors.She develops collaborative distance education initiatives and conducts research and education programs related to technology access and applications with more than 60 land-grant university members and international affiliates. She is a member of the International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame and on its Board of Directors and serves as Treasurer; is a Board member and Treasurer of Sloan-C; is on the NASULGC Committee on Partnerships between African and U.S. Universities; is member of the Creighton University Health Sciences Distance Education Advisory Board and is a member of the Board of Advisors for Zamorano University in Honduras.
Dr. Poley serves on the Editorial Board for the American Journal of Distance Education; is a liaison to the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges (NASULGC); served as a member of the Penn State Advisory Board to the World Campus Initiative; was a member of the Great Plains Network Advisory Committee; and is an adjunct member of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore Graduate Faculty. She is a professor in the College of Journalism and the Institute of Agricultural and Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. While Director for Communication, Information and Technology (CIT) at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), she served on the NSF Networking Council focusing on education and outreach. In 1994, she was named by Federal Computer Week as one of the 100 outstanding information technology leaders in government, business and academia. She has worked in more than 40 countries, serving six years in Tanzania and received the Excalibur Award from the U.S. Congress for that work.
