Growing up in the Midwest, Miloš Savić, dean of the University of Oklahoma’s College of Professional and Continuing Studies, witnessed the perils of fragile industries and a blindsided workforce.

Savić, who stepped into his new role last March, says that childhood experience gave him empathy for how a family’s fortunes can change through no fault of their own. 

“People thought car manufacturing and steel mills were going to be there for life, or that the economy would stay healthy,” he says, adding that witnessing people endure economic difficulties has informed his work. Savić knows he can’t be complacent about the college’s service to its students—over 1,000 working adults.

PACS, the college that evolved from OU’s legacy Extension Division, is focused on preparing and empowering Oklahoma’s own workforce with data-driven offerings of 10 bachelor’s degree completion programs delivered entirely online.

To ensure the college meets its aims, collaboration and consultation with stakeholders are vital, Savić says. “We’re always asking, ‘What can we do to go further?’ ”

Best practices and emerging trends in adult education are shared among SEC peers and at national conferences, as each institution tries to anticipate their state's future employment prospects. Bodies of research forecast vital information such as Oklahoma’s 100 Critical Occupations list, issued by the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education.

Armed with this data, Savić says he and his peers ask, “How can we impact the community more? What industries can we partner with?”

EARLY DAYS

Savić knows he’s not the first OU leader in his position to pursue those answers. Starting in 1913, when the Extension Division was formally established, each year brought new opportunities and challenges, along with technological advancements. 

Through correspondence and short courses, educational radio programs and faculty visits to rural community groups, OU’s Extension Division engaged in furthering knowledge. Before Oklahomans flocked to industrial hubs for new jobs, they needed to develop new skills to enter the workforce. A teacher shortage also meant that geographically disadvantaged high school students needed supplementation to qualify for college admission and to pursue specialist topics. 

In a post-war era, the university’s obligation to the state and its people inspired more focused efforts to align offerings with forecasted workforce needs. 

“One of the main goals of the (Extension Division) is to aid the state in receiving new industries to strengthen its economy,” Robert Talley wrote in Sooner Magazine in 1954. “The department also endeavors with the co-operation of numerous concerns in the state to increase the number of persons fitted for supervisory and management work—key positions in economic growth.”

TODAY

Though PACS’ objectives remain largely the same, the college’s services have since been further refined to complement the experience and focus that working adults bring with them to their studies. Adult students are aware that a degree will help them advance in their career or obtain skills and credentials to change fields.

“They know what they want to do, and they know an OU degree is going to help them do it,” Savić says. “Our average student age is 35, one out of five are veterans or on active duty and one out of every three are first-generation students.”

LaDawn Jones, director of student success at PACS, says current students are located across the U.S. and some are deployed overseas. They thrive in the college’s eight-week, asynchronous courses, designed to accommodate the schedules of adults with work and caregiving responsibilities.

“They don’t have to log on at a certain time, and it makes it easier to complete the work on their own terms,” she says.

Intentional, meaningful interaction with professors supports a persistence rate far higher than the national average, meaning that, from semester to semester, PACS students are more likely to keep taking courses.

Yukon, Okla., native Johnnie Green, OU ’17 BA and ’19 MA, was stationed in Naples, Italy, when he enrolled in the administrative leadership program he knew would help him advance. 

“PACS was essential in allowing me to continue my career,” says Cmdr. Green, who recently used the communication skills he honed through his two OU PACS degrees to bridge language and cultural gaps while on assignment at NATO's Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Belgium. “I’m very thankful that I decided to get back into the coursework and extremely thankful to the PACS staff who supported my journey.” 

Back in the Student Success office on campus, Jones, a Navy veteran and two-time PACS alumna, recognizes the value of the flexibility and understanding that the college’s advisers provide nontraditional students. But she wishes they could do even more.

“Someone might call us and say, ‘My refrigerator went out and I can’t pay my tuition, I’m going to have to drop out,’ ” she says. “We’d love to fund emergency scholarships.”

Savić affirms that helping more students with scholarships would change lives. “Sometimes we have students for whom the cost of one course could have been the reason that they didn't graduate. We want to help them get across the finish line.”

Beyond degree programs, Savić exudes enthusiasm about the entire PACS operation, and for good reason. “I like to say the college serves students from ages 6 to 96,” he says.

Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) seminars delivered by OU professors are extremely popular and often fill quickly. PACS also coordinates professional development conferences and hosts an economic development institute, as well as pre-collegiate day camps for children.

Through these updated offerings, the PACS mission to serve the state in a thoughtful variety of ways still maintains a connection to the extension division of the past with a renewed commitment to delivering hope through education. 

“I’m excited about the wide potential of the college,” Savić says, “and our support for our community, the state of Oklahoma and the nation.” 

A Wartime Response

“One of the best things about PACS is our ability to pivot at any turn,” says LaDawn Jones, director of student success at OU’s College of Professional and Continuing Studies. “We’ve got a pretty rich history.” That history is on paper in OU’s Western History Collections.

In September 1941, the U.S. Office of Education’s Civilian Morale Service requested that schools across the country coordinate to deploy their resources and empower all citizens to serve the defense effort.  At that point, OU’s Extension Division had already spent the previous year emphasizing defense preparation and conducting civilian morale services.

Extension Division Director of Short Courses R. Boyd Gunning sent a letter to University Secretary Emil Kraettli that demonstrated the university’s capabilities to meet the needs of the state and the nation. He listed free and immediately available resources that were already circulating throughout the state.

“… This information service contains articles on all current problems relating to defense, and might be expanded to become a clearing house for civilian defense courses, study programs on defense problems, guidance literature on available occupations in defense industries, or in the civilian defense organizations.

“Normally, over 30,000 packages of information are mailed each year in answer to specific requests received from residents of Oklahoma. Many inquiries being received are now on some phase of the world emergency.”

In addition, the Visual Education Film Library, rural lectures from faculty members and educational and entertainment programming on OU’s statewide WNAD radio offered rich resources for morale as well as practical wartime skill-building for civilians.

By February of 1942, OU had developed a series of Student Training for Civilian Defense night classes to be taken while students’ social activities were restricted to weekends. Classrooms on campus became hubs of patriotic unity, with short courses in aerial photograph reading, airplane spotting, blackout precautions, rifle marksmanship and musketry, sewing for defense and solving coded messages. 

PACS Facts by the Numbers

Celebrating 113 years of distance learning

Number of students enrolled: 1,303 in 2024-25

Percentage growth of enrollment since Fall 2021: 93%

Number of states represented: 40

Number of countries where students are located: 5

Newest degree offered: Construction Science Management

Number of age 50-plus OLLI members: 1,215

Number of visitors/attendees annually to the conference center in 2025: 83,723

Longest time to degree completion for a PACS student: 16 years, graduating in fall 2024

Sara Morrell Cowan is assistant editor of Sooner Magazine.

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