Approximately ten years ago, Katie Egan met and hired Bethany Meyer, a fellow UMBC alumna, to help with her consulting business. The two set out to build quality, customized online courses for a variety of clients. Katie was the experienced instructional designer; Bethany was the engineer and web developer. Along the way, they realized that they just might be able to build and scale a platform that would allow instructors to more easily design and launch their own online courses. The task for Katie and Bethany was to avail an affordable, easy-to-use, secure and standards-compliant platform for launching online courses in K-12, postsecondary, and corporate learning. Enter CourseArc.