About Education-Portal.com:

The Beginning of a Journey

After feeling the financial pinch of rising college textbook costs, Adrian Ridner and Ben Wilson, two classmates at Cal Poly State University---San Luis Obispo, knew there had to be a way to relieve the financial burden being placed on themselves and their fellow students. In 2002, they found the way.
Adrian and Ben helped lead the launch of a student-driven online book exchange that allowed students to bypass campus bookstores. Within months, thousands of students began using the free, money-saving service, and word began spreading beyond Cal Poly to other local colleges and universities. Adrian and Ben were thrilled to be reducing textbook costs, but both realized there was a much larger issue at hand: it wasn't just barriers to books that confronted students but barriers to all kinds of education resources. Solving the problem of education access became their cause and signaled the start of Education-Portal.com.

Our Mission & the Dream the Drives Us

As a true self-funded start up, Education-Portal.com began with one dream, one garage-based office and one mission: making education accessible to everyone, everywhere. With the help of a handful of talented contributors, Adrian and Ben worked relentlessly to turn this dream into a full-fledged company known today as Remilon, LLC

Education-Portal.com is now a true collaboration of the best minds in education, with more than 200 teachers, professors, librarians, editors and subject matter experts contributing to it on a daily basis. It continues to grow at a remarkable pace and now reaches over two million education seekers each month.

What we're doing

Here at Education-Portal.com, we know that 'accessible' doesn't mean the same thing for everyone. For some students, an accessible education means better funding and scholarship opportunities. For others, it means finding the right information to make the most informed choices about degree programs and careers. We've designed Education-Portal.com to provide information, education and funding, which means that we have everything you need to get started on the path to education and career success.

Giving You Education Resources... and Lots of Them

1. Educating You... One Free Course at a Time

   There's one universal problem in higher education: college tuition is skyrocketing and becoming out of reach to many students. That's why we've created Education Portal Academy, which offers free courses, free test prep and the lowest cost path to college credit. How it works is simple. Watch our free lessons, test your knowledge with our free quizzes and then sign up for a CLEP exam for just $77. You can earn real college credit that is accepted at over 2/3 of colleges in the U.S.
   

2. Making Open Education Work for You

   Every year, millions of students learn from top universities without paying a dime. As the PR platform for the open education movement, our Education Portal Insider brings you the best open education resources through projects like the OCW People's Choice Awards, which received over 18,000 votes from our community.
   "Education-Portal.com is really helping to spread the word about the availability of OpenCourseWare and open educational resources. Thanks for making these valuable open resources known to a wide audience of learners!"
   —Mary Lou Forward, Executive Director of the OCW Consortium
   

3. Helping You Make Life-Shaping Decisions

   Choosing the right degree program is the first step to a successful career. We've published thousands of unbiased, professionally reviewed articles that have helped millions of students make informed, life-shaping decisions. Thanks to our Perfect Search Guarantee, we promise that our free library of articles, videos and eguides can help you choose a career path and find the education you need. And if you can't find what you're looking for, just ask! Tweet us @educationportal for personalized answers to your questions.

Funding Your Education

Providing You Financial Support

Even though tuition costs are rising, we want to help make your education affordable. We're providing funding from every angle imaginable, from our Free Textbooks for a Year Scholarship to our eleven annual academic scholarships, which helped fund the education of college students like Danielle McNeal and Bonnie Rickenbach.

Supporting Public Universities

We know that public universities are one of the most affordable options for students, but budgets cuts are endangering this valuable resource. As the lead sponsor of a state-of-the-art computer lab at Cal Poly University in San Luis Obispo, California, we're helping public universities provide world-class education at affordable prices.

SOCIAL COMMITMENT IN ACTION

We're committed to fighting poverty with education.

In 2009, we partnered with the The Riecken Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to building sustainable libraries in rural Central America.

For the vast majority of these rural communities, the Riecken libraries are the only source of educational programming, books, computers and Internet, and they serve as critical settings to increase literacy and community independence.

We have donated $30,000 to directly support Riecken's 64 libraries and have pledged an additional $30,000 to be donated over the next two years. Join us on the front lines to bridge the digital divide and close the gap between the world's richest and poorest communities.

A message from Riecken Foundation's CEO

"Beyond being generous, Education-Portal.com has shown it is truly interested in our cause. The donations provided have kept rural communities in Guatemala and Honduras connected to technology and the Internet. Thanks to Education-Portal.com's support, a group of thirty teenage Chorti Mayan teenagers from the Honduras region of Copan were recently able to receive three days of computer and Internet training. The teens live in very poor villages in an isolated region of Honduras. The teens aspire to continue studies after primary school, and this training, their first ever with computers, inspired many to continue studying. Thank you, Education-Portal.com."

— Bill Cartwright, Tegucigalpa Honduras; Antigua, Guatemala

Other education charities we financially support include:

• First Book
• Minds Matter
• Posse Foundation

• Pride Foundation
• Room to Read
• Special Operations Warrior Foundation

FOUNDING TEAM

• Ben Wilson

  President and Founder

  Ben brings over nine years of Web media experience to Education-Portal.com and leads our team of educators and content developers. Ben has been a driving force in making Education-Portal.com a leader in the open education movement and the largest free educational resource provider on the Web. Ben holds a bachelor's degree in business administration from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, CA. In his spare time, Ben enjoys playing basketball, going bass fishing and spending time with his wife and two young children.

• Adrian Ridner

  CEO and Founder

  Adrian brings over nine years of Web engineering experience to Education-Portal.com. He leads a team of developers and engineers to integrate our content with the latest technologies. His team works to make our resources simple to use, easy to navigate and enjoyable to engage. Adrian earned a master's degree in computer science from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. He was born in Argentina and spent a large part of his childhood in Venezuela and Brazil. Adrian is fluent in Spanish, Portuguese and English.

EDUCATION PORTAL ACADEMY FACULTY

Education Portal Academy is a collaboration of dedicated faculty, subject matter experts and guest professors aimed at breaking down barriers between access and opportunity in the world. If you want to contribute to this project, tweet us @educationportal or apply to become an expert consultant.

• Greg Chin

  Dr. Chin has taught genetics, molecular biology, and general biology to high school, collegiate, and post-graduate students at Stanford University, the University of California, Los Angeles, Santa Clara University and the Dolan DNA Learning Center at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He has also taught science workshops for the general public and led biology teacher enrichment workshops throughout the U.S. He received a B.S. in Genetics from the University of California, Davis, and a Ph.D. from Stanford University.

EDUCATION PORTAL INSIDER REPORTERS

After launching in 2010, Education Portal Insider has quickly become the PR platform for the open education movement and a critical resource for students seeking money-saving resources. Do you want to share your best ideas on how students can save time and money? Simply tweet us @educationportal, and our reporters will follow up.

• Stacy Redd

  Stacy Redd leads the Education Portal Insider reporting team. She has a master's degree in literary cultures from New York University. She has worked in higher education administration at UCLA and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and has taught Fundamentals of English at Santa Monica College.

• Jessica Lyons

  Jessica Lyons earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from St. John's University in 2004. She reports on education, culture, sports and health. Jessica has devoted part of her career to writing about all levels of education and has focused on what students, teachers and administrators have been doing to make a difference in their schools and communities.

• Sarah Wright

  Sarah Wright is a writer living in Portland, Oregon. She is interested in educational accessibility issues and has volunteered as an adult literacy tutor. Sarah has a bachelor's degree in art and is currently pursuing independent study of English grammar so she can feel confident being smug about misused apostrophes.

• Eric Garneau

  Eric Garneau has been a freelance writer since 2010 and was a small business owner before that. He graduated from the University of Illinois with a bachelor's degree in English and philosophy. His work also appears on the blogs Cover Me and Nerdy Nothings.

• Laura Allen

  Laura Allan is a freelance writer living in San Jose, California. She graduated with a degree in English from Randolph Macon Woman's College and a minor in Classics. She received the Margaret Raynal Fiction Prize three times for her short stories during college. Her love for education has made her passionate about making learning cheaper and more accessible for students.

Contact Us

We'd love to hear from you! Please tell us how we are doing or how we can help you.Contact us on Facebook, telephone at 650-425-7512 or even write us at:

Education-Portal.com
100 View St. #202
Mountain View, CA 94041