Illinois offers one model of how schools can partner
A statewide effort designates psychology courses that transfer across levels.
By Bridget Murray
Monitor staff
The transfer from two-year to four-year colleges can be difficult for students. Many aren't sure which of their courses at the two-year level will be transferable. Some end up having to retake courses at a four-year college that they took at a community college but weren't allowed to transfer. Others find that their transferable courses didn't cover concepts that university faculty assume they know.
So in Illinois, where close to 11,000 students from two-year colleges transfer to four-year colleges each year, educators have moved to overcome the glitches. Acting on the directive of the Illinois Board of Higher Education, the Illinois Community College Board and several state education agencies besides, they're working out a universal set of community-college courses that four-year colleges accept for credit.
In 1993, when the state launched its initiative to "articulate," or define transferable courses, it recommended a core curriculum of general-education courses for adoption by its educational institutions. (Partici-pation is optional.)
Next it called on psychology, nursing, engineering, business and education--the top five university majors chosen by transfer students--to develop their own articulation plans.
Heading the 20-person panel for psychology are Patricia Puccio, EdD, of the two-year College of DuPage, and William Addison, PhD, of Eastern Illinois University. The panel's first meetings in 1994 were "a little contentious" as faculty struggled to determine which courses were basic enough to transfer, says Addison. Once they'd made that decision, however, "the work became very smooth," says Puccio. By 1995, the group submitted its articulation plan, which went into effect last year.
The plan holds that, after introductory psychology, a maximum of three other psychology courses are guaranteed to transfer to four-year colleges. The five courses beyond introductory psychology that are accepted for transfer credit are developmental, abnormal, industrial/organizational, personality and social psychology.
For each course, the psychology panel has delineated areas to be taught. Faculty who want their courses to transfer must submit their syllabi to the panel in an ongoing approval process. However, the panel does not want its plan to restrict what colleges teach, says Addison. Community colleges that offer other courses, such as statistics, are free to forge their own related articulation agreements with area universities, he notes.
"Our plan is not to limit transferability of additional courses or to discourage development of new courses," says Addison.
Rather, he says, the hope is that when students who transfer to institutions like his--where up to 30 percent of students start off at community college--"they won't have to play catch up and are better prepared."
For more information on the Illinois Articulation Initiative, visit its web site at www.itransfer.org.
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