In an effort to improve access to education and to better serve residents of its 600 square mile district, Waubonsee Community College (WCC), in Sugar Grove, Illinois, utilizes telecourses, audiocourses, and live classes via microwave transmission to deliver instruction. Video and audio courses utilize prerecorded instructional materials, textbooks, and study guides, and allow students to proceed at their own pace. The prerecorded materials may be checked out from the Waubonsee Learning Resources Center, local public libraries, and some video stores. WCC also operates a four-channel Instructional Television Fixed Service to present teleconferences and transmit prerecorded telecourses to local cable companies for distribution, and has recently installed a low-power UHF station. Perhaps the most unique application of telecommunications technology in use at WCC is the live instruction delivered over its microwave system, Telecommunications Instructional Consortium (TIC), a specially licensed communications medium that allows for closed circuit transmission of audio and video signals between six campuses and two-way communication between instructors and students. The system was designed to promote user friendliness for professors and to ensure reliable operation by keeping the teaching environment as invisible as possible. Each semester, WCC averages 30 credit-college courses via TIC covering such topics as speech, child development, psychology, accounting, criminal justice, history, health, Spanish, and English as a Second Language. Over 6,000 students have participated in the system, and a 1991 study showed that students taking courses via the TIC performed as well as students in the traditional section of the same course. (MAB)