Gregory Emerson

Every day, shipments of books are boxed, labeled, and loaded for delivery to Iceland, Hungary, Bosnia, Kosovo, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Italy, and 71 other countries throughout Europe, Asia, North Africa, and even part of South America.

Is it Amazon.com? Publisher's Clearinghouse?

No. This amazing enterprise is the UMUC-Europe textbook operation, which ships more than 100,000 volumes annually to about 30,000 students in approximately 5,000 class sections in UMUC military supported classrooms.

But the challenges of distributing a massive quantity of time sensitive classroom materials isn't the only one that the operation has to overcome.

Gregory Emerson, who has managed the textbook operation for more than eight years, buys and sells college texts on the international market in the midst of changing currency markets and the rapidly advancing Euro. The textbook staff of 14 manage the logistics of shifting classrooms on mobile military bases, the intensified 8- to 10-week class session format, and the complex freight restrictions of the European Union and the military mailing systems.

The most amazing fact of all is that the UMUC-Europe textbook operation offers textbooks at great saving -- well below retail cost -- to the military students; any margin of revenue provides matching funds to help keep tuition low.

While the enterprise is considering hiring an outside vendor to distribute distance education materials, Emerson said, "We are asking interested distributors to consider support for a UMUC-Europe Book Scholarship Fund. Our objective is to help students who need it most with the cost of textbooks."

The textbook operation also offers alumni apparel for UMUC-Europe at reasonable prices. Alumni can purchase books online through UMUC's virtual bookstore at www.bkstore.com/umuc/; other UMUC merchandise is available at www.umuc.edu/umucgear/. A percentage of each purchase benefits students by going to support the Alumni Scholarship Fund.