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Colleges reach transfer agreement: New deal focuses on STEM curriculum

By Bill Conrad, bconrad@acnpapers.com

Published: Tuesday, April 17, 2012 11:23 AM CDT

Attending a community college for two years before transferring to a four-year university is a common educational path for high school graduates. Now, thanks to a recent transfer agreement between Collin College and the University of Texas at Dallas, the second part of that equation is going to be easier than ever.

The agreement will focus on aligning the curriculum of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) courses to make transferring as seamless as possible for students studying those disciplines, said Cameron Neal, an academic dean at the Collin College Preston Ridge campus in Frisco.

"Essentially, we didn't want students to be unprepared in the courses they transferred into, or for them to take the wrong courses at the community college," Neal said. "We wanted to make their transition as smooth as we could make it."

The agreement was due in part to a $2.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation. Professors and deans from UTD, Collin College and Richland College met for more than two years to discuss course syllabi, textbooks and instructional methodology to ensure they were similar at all three institutions.

"We have had a transfer articulation general agreement with UTD for about 10 years now," Neal said. "They are also one of our concurrent enrollment partners so a student can enroll in both institutions simultaneously. This new agreement will reinforce and strengthen the existing agreements."

Neal said STEM curriculum is more important than ever if the United States wants to be the most technologically advanced country in the world. He said since technology-based jobs are typically high paying and secure, the ability to produce students capable of filling those jobs is a goal of all three colleges.

The creation of jobs and the impact of research universities on local communities were some of the topics that Dr. David Daniel, president of UTD, spoke to the Plano City Council about on April 9.

"We provide an outstanding talent pool," he told the council. "This great university, with so many smart young men and women, is right here in your backyard. And 80 percent of our graduates stay in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

"[UTD] also is a magnet to help attract top companies. Texas Instruments, a few years ago, decided to build their next multi-billion dollar chip plant right here in North Texas rather than someplace else in the world because they felt our university, and the investments in that university would provide them with that highly-skilled people that they would need."

Daniel said the two biggest feeder schools to UTD are Plano high schools, with more than 2,200 of the university's 19,000 students coming from the city. In addition, more than 550 faculty members call Plano home.

He also praised UTD's relationship with Collin College, which includes the Comet Connection, a way to take the guesswork out of paying for college. With the program, a student can sign up with UTD, attend Collin College for two years and transfer to UTD at the rate locked in prior to the student's freshman year. Daniel said there is no obligation to transfer to UTD, so there is really no downside in signing up for the program before entering Collin College.

"When a student enrolls, we assure that the tuition and fee rates will stay fixed for four years," he said. "... We put that in place because we realized that college is expensive and one of the things we can do is make it completely predictable and have no surprises. [We don't want someone] to get halfway through college and then have a big tuition increase and say 'oh well, I didn't need to finish college anyway.'"

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