By day, he steers a Caterpillar tractor around the frozen landscape of the world's most remote continent. By night, he navigates university Web space in pursuit of a certificate in geographic information systems (GIS).

Meet Paul Thur, the first student at Penn State's Antarctica campus.

"I heard about the course on the Web and decided that the certificate would be a great step in a new direction," Thur wrote in e-mail from his computer at McMurdo Station, roughly 2,300 miles south of New Zealand.

Penn State is not actually setting up a permanent site in Antarctica, but the university's World Campus continues to attract students from all 50 states, more than 40 foreign countries and -- with addition of Thur -- all seven continents.

Since it began in 1997, the online distance-education program has grown from a few dozen students to include nearly 6,000 course enrollments by the 2001-02 academic year. A course enrollment means one student registered for one course.

That number could top 9,200 by the end of the 2002-03 academic year, said Gary Miller, executive director of World Campus.

This week, Penn State said it would be expanding the number of degree programs it offers through eArmyU, the U.S. Army's online university. The university is one of 19 American schools that allow soldier-students the chance to continue their educations while on military service.

Students logging on from outside the country to take courses only represent about 4 percent of World Campus participation, Miller said. But Thur's enrollment on the other side of the world made people sit up and take notice.

"The numbers aren't huge ... but the fact that [students] are everywhere is a testament to how the Web changes what we mean when we talk about a learning community," Miller said.

David DiBiase, a senior lecturer in geography who coordinates the online GIS certificate program, said Thur was an enthusiastic student with good time-management skills.

"He was in it for all the right reasons," DiBiase said.

Thur finished his first course with Penn State -- Geography 5121 (The Nature of Geographic Information) -- in December. Thur picked up course content over the Web, communicated by e-mail and participated in online discussion boards.

He has spent four summers and two winters at McMurdo, where he works for Raytheon Polar Services Co., a subcontractor for the U.S. government's National Science Foundation.

In his e-mail messages, Thur gave a glimpse into what life is like on the continent.

Thur said he has always enjoyed the cold weather. "Maybe that explains a little bit of why I come down here," the Buffalo, N.Y., native said.

Since he arrived in August, Thur has worked about nine hours a day, six days a week. He is scheduled to leave at the end of February.

"Work is not always challenging, but it is always an adventure," Thur said. "There is always a possibility of something going wrong or some impossible situation arising."

Most of the time, the 1,000 or so summer residents of McMurdo get up in the morning and get started just like the rest of the world, Thur said.

Communication has improved over the years. About a decade ago, there was not much Internet access, and the telephones were two miles away at a base owned by New Zealand.

"It's not as remote as it used to be, but you still get to missing the people you care about back home," Thur said.