Ten majors at Fresno City College have been approved and now meet the requirements for the Transfer Model Curriculum also known as transfer degrees.
The approved majors are business, communication studies, early childhood studies, geology, mathematics, political science, psychology, sociology, theater arts and philosophy. The English degree is expected to be approved later in the semester.
The TMC was started in 2010 by legislation sponsored by Senator Alex Padilla to help community college students transfer to California State Universities with an associate degree.
Faculty from both the community college system and the CSU system are working together to mold curriculum that both organizations can agree on and benefits students the most. However, this kind of collaboration can be arduous.
“We have run into some kinks trying to get everyone on the same page,” said Kerry Ybarra, philosophy instructor and chair of the curriculum committee at FCC.
The mandate for institutions to comply with the program comes from the State Chancellor’s office.
Ybarra said the goal for community colleges was to have 100 percent of the majors done by 2014, but she doesn’t know if that goal will be met. She believes that many of the remaining majors may not go through until the middle of next year.
In a Feb. 2013 news conference, Erik Skinner, deputy chancellor for California Community Colleges, said the goal of the program was to save money and make more room in community colleges and four-year universities.
The degrees have different names, which may cause some confusion for students. The degrees will be known as “associate degrees for transfers” or ADTs, as opposed to the traditional AA and AS degrees.
Leticia Canales, head of the transfer center at FCC, praises the program and its purpose of streamlining the transfer process but also said that the responsibility falls on students to be informed and aware of what requirements they need to transfer with the new degrees.
“Students need to do some research on what pathway is best for them, again,” Canales said. “It’s ultimately the student’s decision on what they want to do so that [counselors] can do our job in setting up the plan.”
Ybarra has also been doing her part to inform students and staff of changes to the programs. She met with counselors to make sure they were informed about the changes.
Despite the progress the program has made, fully intergrating it into students’ plans is an ongoing process.
“We’re going to be in a phase of transition for some time until we see a lot more of these [transfer degrees] and people are going to say ‘I’m willing to do that,’” said Canales.
The future for the transfer degrees is bright and Canales says that it is progress that will allow more students to able to leave FCC with something to show for their work.
She said, “We’re going to see a lot more transfer degree completions of students transferring with these degrees.”
