Downtown Raleigh's Shaw University will offer courses to students at the two-year Louisburg College who want to complete bachelor's degrees. At the same time, Louisburg's 79-acre rural campus could become a boon to student life at Shaw because it offers athletics fields and a performing-arts complex.

"Our students would oftentimes upon their graduation say, 'I wish I could earn my bachelor's degree at Louisburg and stay here for another two years,' " said Rodney Foth, Louisburg's executive vice president. "After hearing that comment time and time again, we started to explore ways we could actually fulfill the wishes of our students."

About 90 percent of Louisburg graduates later earn bachelor's degrees.

For the first time, videoconferencing technology incorporated by Shaw this summer will be extended beyond its eight satellite campuses to another institution.

"The students can start at Louisburg College, they can stay in the dormitories at Louisburg College and continue their education and graduate with a Shaw degree," said Martel Perry, Shaw's executive vice president.

Two years ago, Louisburg had fewer than 400 students but began an expansion driven by a $1.8 million federal grant to improve technology on campus, Foth said. The college also renovated dorms and its dining hall.

Enrollment has increased to 573 students this year, with about 700 students projected for next fall.

Live lectures from Shaw professors will begin in January on Louisburg's campus, about 30 miles north of Raleigh in the center of Franklin County. The two business courses taught this spring will expand to a full bachelor's degree-completion program next fall.

The new feeder program offers mutual benefits for very different schools with common missions.

Founded in 1865, Shaw is the oldest historically black college in the South and is affiliated with North Carolina's black Baptist churches. Louisburg was founded in 1787, has Methodist roots and is the oldest church-related, co-educational junior college in the nation. Louisburg's student population is 46 percent black.

For Louisburg, the partnership offers a four-year degree to students who want to remain on a familiar campus with support services that have guided them to an associate's degree -- particularly those in programs for students with learning differences and learning disabilities, such as dyslexia.

There's an opportunity for Shaw to increase its enrollment, now about 2,500, and to test-drive its new distance-learning network.

Another consideration, Perry said, is the potential to assist other colleges.

"In the past, some colleges have had situations where their accreditation has been in jeopardy or they have lost enrollment, and this gives us a working backdrop to see how this works to support other institutions that have the dormitory space, that have the teaching faculty, but may need some other assistance," the Shaw executive said.

Another plus for Shaw: Its championship football team has no home athletic fields, but Louisburg has several. Louisburg also offers a performing-arts complex with a 1,200-seat auditorium and black-box theater.

Staff writer Cindy George can be reached at 829-4656 or cgeorge@newsobserver.com.