There is no Georgian brick here. No nose to rub when you walk into the library. No Main Street.

Instead, there are panoramic views of Wilmington’s East Side neighborhood. Or of downstate farmland that stretches to the horizon. 

This is UD, too—albeit a little different.

Long known in Delaware as the Parallel Program but reinvented in 2005 as the Associate in Arts Program (AAP), this unique pathway to a UD bachelor’s degree offers an ambitious, mission-centric vision to ensure all Delawareans have access to a premier, affordable UD education.  

Through the AAP, Delaware students earn 60 credits in UD classes taught by UD professors, live near home (the non-residential program has locations in each of the state’s three counties), and gain the necessary skills and coursework to transition to the Newark campus, as nine out of 10 do.

“It’s an innovative and seamlessly integrated pathway into degree completion,” says President Dennis Assanis. “The program is deliberately designed for flexible opportunity.”

It is also designed for student success amidst a rapidly changing workforce. Today’s AAP students conduct undergraduate research with UD faculty, receive more extensive and personalized career advising across the program’s three campuses and choose from a growing number of internships and community engagement projects.

The expanded services are especially prominent in Wilmington, where AAP had been operating on the Delaware Technical Community College campus since 1971 and, in its own space in the UD Downtown Center since 2015.

Now, the Wilmington AAP has relocated to the Community Education Building (CEB) in the heart of the city’s business district, where it occupies 50,000 square feet on the eighth and ninth floors and shares building space with other educational programs, including two charter schools, Kuumba Academy and Great Oaks.

The CEB mission aligns well with UD’s. Or as David Satran, faculty director of UD’s Associate in Arts Program, puts it, “Our mandate is equity. For a long time, higher education has asked: Are our students prepared for us? Now, we’re asking: How well are we prepared for our students?”

To answer that question, AAP faculty and staff are trained to assist with food insecurity, housing, internet and laptop access, transportation and wellness. The new location also provides space for students to study with amenities they may otherwise lack at home, from baskets of healthy snacks to quiet spaces to reliable internet service. 

“You can’t just assume that every family has access to all the resources that support student success,” says AAP Associate Director David Teague, based in the Wilmington campus. 

And student success is fundamental to the AAP mission. Tuition costs are roughly one-third of those on the Newark campus; however, nearly all students attend for free, either through federal Pell Grants, or through SEED, the Delaware scholarship program that covers tuition for eligible state residents. 

Current student Isaiah Gerard, AS24, puts it more bluntly: “I’m saving a ton of money here.”

The affordability factor helps attract Delaware students, he and his classmates agree, but so do the small classes. 

“It feels like high school, but it’s a transition,” says AAP student Avery Ruebush, AS25. “I’ve taken classes in entomology, leadership, gender studies. They don’t really go together, but they give me a good sense of what I want to do.”     

That process of discovery requires a climate of support that “meets students where they are,” says Teague.   

Rony Baltazar-Lopez, AS17, for instance, had responsibilities at home—taking care of his siblings, helping with the family business, serving as “unofficial translator” for his immigrant parents. With only an eighth-grade education, his mother and father viewed higher education as a crucial ticket into the middle class, but Baltazar-Lopez knew that enrolling at a campus far from his Milford home would prove difficult. 

AAP would offer the perfect solution, allowing him to meet his familial obligations while earning a bachelor’s degree in political science. Now, Baltazar-Lopez is working on his master's in public administration from the University, serves as community relations officer for the Delaware Department of State and is also an official of the Milford School Board, inspiring other first-generation students of color into leadership positions. 

“It never felt like you were just going to class or just trying to pass,” he says of the AAP experience that laid this career foundation. “It felt like you were fostering relationships.” 

Alumni echo these sentiments. “The program set me up for success,” says Delaware’s 2021 Teacher of the Year Cameron Sweeney, AS11, BE21M, who went on to earn his bachelor’s and masters degrees at UD and now teaches social studies at Polytech High School. “It allowed me to adapt to college in a way that fit my needs.” 

Cody Prang, AS12, didn’t even know what a Ph.D. was when he first enrolled in AAP. Today, the professor of anthropology at Texas A&M credits his rigorous Associate in Arts preparation as foundational for his journey.

“The material was the same as in Newark and the expectations were high,” he says, “but the classes were small, and there was a lot of individual attention.” 

For Zoë Read, AS11, taking classes in Wilmington for two years didn’t prevent her deep involvement in UD’s Newark campus, where she joined the skating club and wrote for the student newspaper, eventually becoming features editor.

“Students came from Newark to Wilmington to tell us about all the activities we could be part of, so that made it easy to be involved,” says Read, who went on to earn a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and is now a news reporter back in Delaware.

The success stories go on and on. Since its inception in 1967, the program has graduated thousands of UD alumni who have made immeasurable contributions to the state and beyond. Looking ahead, the AAP plans to broaden curricular offerings in health, business and other fields (and has already expanded offerings to include a track to degrees in elementary teacher education and nursing).

“But our perspective is the same,” Satran says. “We are going to be ready for our students.”

Stay tuned.