The Great Plains IDEA Gerontology Program: an online, interinstitutional graduate degree

The Great-Plains IDEA Gerontology Program is a graduate program developed and implemented by the Great Plains Interactive Distance Education Alliance (Great Plains IDEA). The Great Plains IDEA (Alliance) originated as a consortium of Colleges of Human Sciences ranging across the central United States. This Alliance's accomplishments have included faculty development in online distance education, development of cooperative approaches to graduate education among faculty and institutions, and development of quality graduate programming. In this article, the process of developing a national model for collaboration is discussed, the barriers that the program overcame are highlighted, and the lessons learned through implementing a graduate program in gerontology are presented. The outcomes of the assessment conducted across seven states to determine interest in an online gerontology graduate program and the findings from program evaluation efforts are presented.