By Jack Armstrong News Editor
Western is among a collection of four-year Oregon universities that could soon see a shift in their policies concerning community college transfer students and their credit allocations in the coming years.
Recommendations for inter-college credit transfers and course requirements for possible transfer students were all previously handled through the Joint Boards Articulation Committee (JBAC) and the Higher Education Coordinating Commission (HECC).
According to their website, JBAC is an organization formed in 1992 by the Oregon University System (OUS) to “address issues related to student transfer and articulation.”
The committee played an integral role in the past decade with the creation of the Associates of Art Oregon Transfer degree (AAOT), and the Associates of Science Oregon Transfer degree (ASOT). They also helped plan the Oregon Transfer Module (OTM), which compiles community college courses and their corresponding four year credit labels.
These degrees allow Oregon students to gain the first two years of a four-year degree at a community college and then smoothly transition to a four-year university to complete their undergraduate work.
The dissolution of the OUS had left the future of the JBAC in doubt due to rapidly shifting standards during the transition, but recently the JBAC received permission from the HECC to be reorganized into the Joint Transfer and Articulation Committee (JTAC).
In its first iteration, JTAC will be chaired by Western’s own provost and vice president for academic affairs, Stephen Scheck.
“JTEC’s ultimate goal is to streamline the process of transfer so that students get the most out of the coursework they take at the community college prior to transferring to a four-year university,” Scheck said.
The new JTAC model will operate in a similar capacity to JBAC but will be focused on creating and maintaining a complete list of courses offered at the community college level, and the corresponding requirements at the four-year level.
According to the Provost’s report to Western’s faculty senate, “an immediate request from the JTAC is for the four year schools to identify essential pre-major courses to be taken during the first and second year at the community college so students can transfer directly into junior-level course work.”
This will require the dean of each department at the four-year level to compile a “request list” of required course work so that transfer students experience as little overlap as possible when making the switch from an associate program to a bachelor program.
Currently, Western is a popular transfer destination for Oregon students due in large part to the relative ease of transferring in.
“The process was super easy and there is a high volume of acceptance for some students,” said Juan Esparza, a 2015 Western business school graduate who transferred from Blue Mountain Community College (BMCC) in Eastern Oregon.
“I knew coming in that I would probably be accepted because I had completed all of my LACCs at BMCC,” he added.
While students from in-state schools have an easy time transferring to Western, some out-of-state transfer students have had a more complicated experience.
“I had to go to each department individually and argue for my transfer credits to be counted,” said Elizabeth Aldrich, a third-year public policy major transfer student from Front Range Community College in Fort Collins, Colorado.
“I have about 12 credits still that have not transferred over from my junior college in Colorado,” she said.
Western’s administration has voiced their intention to focus on making the transfer process easier regardless of student origin.
“Western has a diverse student base, and a lot of our population comes from community colleges in the area seeking further education. We will look to continue strengthening this tie with local community colleges moving forward,” incoming Western President Rex Fuller said.
