Post Classifieds
Transfer students to earn associate's
By Katie Anderson
On October 24, 2012
Transfer students will now be able to earn their Associate Degree after already transferring to a four-
year school, thanks to a $500,000 grant from Lumina Foundation.
The money from the Lumina grant, Credit When It's Due: Recognizing the Value of Quality Associate
Degrees, will go towards funding the new SUNY-wide software called DegreeWorks.
"We are deeply grateful to Lumina Foundation for its support of this important, ground-breaking
initiative," SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher said in a press release. "This project will give our students
greater transfer opportunities within SUNY."
This software is an upgraded version of Degree Navigator that allows transferring students the
opportunity to still obtain an associate's degree after moving to a four-year campus without one.
"What this program will do is help both the two-year and four-year campuses monitor the credits that
the student brings in, and at that point when the student earns enough credit to get the associate
degree, it will be awarded by the sending community college," said Carmela Thompson, director of
admissions. "They don't have to go back, they don't have to reapply, they don't have to do anything.
The data will allow it to happen seamlessly."
The degree auditing data will establish a communal database of course equivalencies throughout SUNY,
preventing a great loss of credits for transfer students.
Although some SUNY campuses are already using DegreeWorks, it is still being determined when the
program will be up and running at Buffalo State. Don Erwin, chief information officer of Information
Services and Systems, said that it could be a couple years before Buffalo State is using it.
"What Buffalo State is in the process of right now is learning how to migrate from Degree Navigator to
DegreeWorks" he said. "There's still a number of training sessions and a lot of work to be done to make
that migration."
Erwin said that DegreeWorks will be easier for students to use than the old system, Degree Navigator.
"From what we've seen so far, it looks like it will be a lot easier," he said. "I think it's really intuitive and
straight forward."
Erwin said that Buffalo State is the only SUNY campus using Degree Navigator and that DegreeWorks
is "a much more mature, well thought-out program."
Of the 2,063 transfer students accepted to Buffalo State last year, about 1,300 enrolled. Thompson said
DegreeWorks could positively impact those numbers.
"It's going to have implications for bringing students in but more importantly and most immediately
it will have implications for students getting their degrees," she said. "So there will be very positive
implications for retention and graduation rates."
Thompson said that SUNY has seen an increase in students transferring without an associate degree,
which would sometimes cause problems for both campuses as well as the student. When a student
transferred without an associate degree, the retention of the community college went down, she said.
"For the community college, that counts as a failed student with regard to their numbers," she
said. "That student was enrolled and didn't graduate."
The student then struggles at a four-year institution because they have not had a full experience at the
community college and have no sense of accomplishment, Thompson said. The four-year schools may
end up losing those students as well.
"It makes it appear that their experience at the two-year and the four-year schools were failed
experiences," she said. "Not to mention the fact that, no one's getting credit for these students in terms
of official registration goals."
Thompson said that DegreeWorks will resolve this problem because it allows transferred students to still
receive an associate degree.
"Our reason for doing it isn't for the institution or the individual school's benefit," said Erwin. "It's all
geared toward student success."
Katie Anderson can be reached by email at anderson.record@live.com.
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