Growing up in a Greek-American household, Dena Haritos Tsamitis became fluent in Greek very young but never expected the language to come in handy as a career tool.

	Andy Starnes/Post-Gazette
	Dena Haritos Tsamitis, associate director of CMU's Information Networking Institute.

Now she flies to Greece several times a year to help manage a Carnegie Mellon University partnership in Athens where students, plugged in electronically to CMU's Oakland campus, are earning master's degrees in information networking.

Tsamitis, 38, associate director of CMU's Information Networking Institute, helped develop the school's long-distance learning venture with Athens Information Technology, a research and graduate education institute. The program was launched a year ago with students in Athens and Oakland enrolled in the same courses.

As they sit in classrooms in different cities, what's being taught at the CMU campus is broadcast in real time via the Internet to Athens. Videotapes of each class are shipped via overnight mail to the Athens classroom and the students there have access to the same online course material as their Pittsburgh counterparts. Courses in the degree program include technology, business management and networking policy issues.

After completing their first two semesters, a group of 21 students and three professors from Greece arrived in Pittsburgh last month for a four-week session that includes a network design course. There also was a packed schedule of activities ranging from a day at Kennywood and a Pittsburgh Pirates game to get-acquainted meals with CMU faculty and students and Pittsburgh's Greek community.

Of the 36 Pittsburgh-based students enrolled in the program, six will travel to Greece for two weeks this summer.

Part of Tsamitis' role is to assess how the 16-month academic program is working in both cities and fine-tune it as it evolves.

Among the initial problems she detected was a feeling among the Greek students that they weren't directly connected to their colleagues and the CMU campus. "They were hesitant to speak up," she said.

So CMU sent faculty representatives to Athens for a week to interact directly with the class. CMU also has hired adjunct professors and teaching assistants who are on site in Athens to assist students with classroom work, questions and assignments.

Andy Starnes/Post-Gazette
Dena Haritos Tsamitis, associate director of CMU's Information Networking Institute.

"The change in student attitude through human connection is critical in distance learning to make it work," Tsamitis said.

Students, faculty and others associated with the program also need to identify the students in Greece as members of the CMU community.

"Don't call them ATI students,'' she said. "Call them CMU's Athens INI students. They will be alums of CMU."

If the number of students enrolled in the program is any indication, there's a growing demand. This fall, CMU will launch a master's degree in information security and expects an incoming class of about 65 students working toward master's degrees in either information security or information networking. The Athens-based class is expected have 30 new students this fall.

Tsamitis was a natural to work on the long-distance learning program not just because of her Greek heritage but also because she spent several years living and working in Greece.

Her parents, now deceased, were Greek immigrants who for 40 years owned and operated the Harris Grill, a Shadyside landmark.

Fresh out of the first graduating class at Woodland Hills High School in 1982, Tsamitis took a vacation to Greece, where she met her future husband.

She began studies as an English major at the University of Pittsburgh but quit school to get married and live in a town in northern Greece, Kozani, where she taught English as a foreign language for two years.

The couple relocated to Pittsburgh and had two children but moved back to Greece in 1989. Her father financed an English language school there where Tsamitis and her sister also taught computer applications.

Four years later, she and her family returned to Pittsburgh and she finished her undergraduate studies at Pitt in information science.

Degree in hand, she got a flood of job offers, including one from Eli Lilly & Co. as an Internet analyst. She moved her family to Lilly's Indianapolis headquarters and designed and developed the drug company's first Web site as well as educational materials for Lilly's worldwide work force.

After her third child was born six years ago, she wanted to return to Pittsburgh. Lilly moved her back and she telecommuted for several months before she decided to pursue a master's degree. She studied for a year at Robert Morris University, then earned a master's in education in instructional technology from Duquesne University.

CMU hired Tsamitis in 2000 as a consultant with its Office of Technology for Education, and she was named associate director of the INI last year.

In addition to her job at the INI, Tsamitis is an adjunct professor at CMU's H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, where she teaches online and distance learning courses.

Tsamitis, who lives in Mt. Lebanon, compares the demands of juggling her work and raising three children -- ages 16, 14 and 6 -- with her own experience of being raised by parents who operated a busy restaurant.

"I grew up in the restaurant business where it wasn't just a job. My career is part of my life. I love it and am truly passionate about it."