As associate dean of global and online education in Stanford’s School of Engineering, and the executive director of the Stanford Engineering Center for Global & Online Education and Stanford Online, Carissa Little is steering the integration of new technologies (AI, immersive learning) into Stanford faculty taught, online, credentialed non-degree education to support personalized learning.

She has played a significant role in designing and systematizing the Stanford University Credential Framework, a stackable model that offers meaningful pathways to higher education, career advancement, and socio-economic mobility through credentialed, non-degree education programs taught by Stanford faculty and instructors.

Little’s organization launched the first university internet delivery system in 1996, Stanford Online, offering non-degree education by unbundling graduate education and creating shorter formatted, research-informed knowledge transfer courses that were streamed using video/audio/graphics technology developed by Stanford faculty. This led to the first fully internet streamed master’s degree program (Electrical Engineering) and the synergistic establishment of Stanford’s first non-degree credentials in 1999.Little has expanded upon that innovation for more than two decades, scaling Stanford Online’s capabilities to teach learners on a global scale through stackable non-degree credentials that can lead to non-matriculated graduate education and to degree programs. 

Today, her organization continues to issue the majority of non-degree alternative credentials at Stanford, for lifelong learning, professional education, and credit-bearing graduate certificate programs. Her team also delivers online and hybrid master’s degree programs in Engineering, making those degrees more accessible to more students. 

Since 2012, Stanford Online has reached more than 21 million learners around the world.