PW: Macomber Named To Head NYUonline

Gordon Macomber, former president of Macmillan Reference USA, has been appointed president and CEO of NYUonline Inc., the for-profit online learning company of New York University, located in New York's Silicon Alley. NYUonline plans to translate NYU's educational content into online education classes.

According to Macomber, the initial education products will be for noncredit instruction and will be marketed to "corporate universities," to other corporate training programs and to individuals. The courses will be developed by NYU faculty and will feature a mix of text, video and audio components. The first six courses, which leads to the Certificate in Management Training, will be introduced this spring; Macomber said he anticipates offering as many as 100 courses that will include such fields as nursing, accounting and marketing.

A number of Internet experts expect e-learning to be the "next big thing" developed on the Web. As with all things Internet, NYUonline expects to go public at a future date; Macomber is currently building a 20-personstaff; he expects to be fully staffed within the next six months.