Snow College is making dual enrollment a reality for rural high school students.

The National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships (NACEP) Accreditation Commission has granted Snow College’s Interactive Video Conferencing (IVC) program accreditation. That makes Snow the first school in Utah to be accredited to teach in this modality, and the only school in the nation to offer an accredited, fully IVC program to high school students.

With IVC courses, high school students take college classes directly from Snow College faculty without leaving their school. Students tune in to lectures in real-time from a classroom in their school which has been equipped with audiovisual tools that allow students to fully participate in the lectures and coursework.

This method allows rural students and smaller schools to offer college-level courses—something that wasn’t possible before IVC.

In 2019, NACEP expanded the scope of standards to provide a way for IVC courses to become fully accredited, adding a College Provided Faculty (CPF) endorsement. The CPF model is defined as college courses taught to high school students by faculty provided by the college (regardless of location or delivery method). After a break in the application cycle due to the pandemic, NACEP moved forward with the new endorsement and began evaluating programs across the country.

Grand Rapids Community College in Michigan and Idaho State University were awarded accreditation under the CPF endorsement recently, as well.

“Snow College’s IVC program bridges the concurrent enrollment equity gap that often plagues Utah’s rural high schools,” Director of Concurrent Enrollment Mike Daniels said. “The NACEP faculty-taught model accreditation recognizes the countless hours that have gone into creating this program and solidifies Snow College as the nation’s leading provider of concurrent enrollment over IVC.”

This article originally appeared here.