[Agvisors] FW: [UPAC] FW: Advising Symposium Thanks and Questions - Answer from a Pima Student Services Coordinator

Wed Jan 23 13:13:15 MST 2013

Good overview of transfer information from a Pima advisor.

From: upac-request at list.arizona.edu [mailto:upac-request at list.arizona.edu]
On Behalf Of Beaudrie, Alan C - (abeaudri)
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 8:53 AM
To: UPAC at list.arizona.edu
Cc: Tearne, Michael
Subject: [UPAC] FW: Advising Symposium Thanks and Questions - Answer from a
Pima Student Services Coordinator

Hello All,

Ann Samuelson sent out an email to the UPAC listserv as a follow up to the
symposium with questions. I contacted Michael Tearne, former UA advisor and
current Pima Student Services Coordinator to help answer her questions.

He gave me permission to share this with the UPAC listserv.

Thank you Michael, and great questions Ann! You may want to read Ann’s email
first (on the bottom) and then come back to read Michael’s response.

Alan

The AGEC is a certificate program. It is eligible for financial aid. Not all
certificate programs are eligible for financial aid though. That might be
where the confusion is coming from.

A student who finishes a certificate is considered a Pima graduate and is
invited to graduation. I don’t know how Provosts define “completion,” but I
would call completing an AGEC as “completing.”

There are three AGECs that correspond directly to our three basic transfer
associate’s degrees (there are actually more than three but we don’t need to
get more complicated):

AGEC-A is 35 of the 60 credits required for a liberal arts (ALA) degree.

AGEC-B is 35 of the 60 credits required for an associate’s of business
(ABUS) degree.

AGEC-S is 35 of the 60 credits required for an associate’s of science (AS)
degree.

The AGEC represents an articulation agreement between all of the community
colleges in Arizona with all of our state universities. If a student
completes the AGEC certificate, it is guaranteed to transfer to any of the
state community colleges and satisfy the lower-level, general education
requirements (not including second language) at that institution for the
related majors. 

For example, the AGEC-A will take care of all of the tier I and tier II
requirements for the UA BA in Psyc. However, if a student wants a Business
degree, they would need to complete the AGEC-B,  for Chemistry, the AGEC-S.

Why would a Pima advisor suggest the associate’s degree over the AGEC? For
just the reason that Ann mentioned. They can take advantage of our lower
tuition rate for up to 64 transferrable units.

All of the units in a transfer degree must be transferrable in order to
fulfill the degree requirements. Ideally, then, the 25-29 units that a
student completes in addition to the 35 AGEC units are specific to their
major. For example, the student who is interested in a Psyc BA completes the
AGEC-A, takes four semesters of second language, PSY 101, 230 and 289.

However, it’s never that simple. Let’s take the more narrow, specific view
now.

For one thing, some UA majors like some Sciences recommend our students only
complete their AGEC, not the associate’s degree, and then transfer. The
reason being that students who transfer with all of their lower level
education complete end up with schedules that are either really intense with
upper-division core courses or are unable to construct full time schedules
because of rigid prerequisite sequencing. In fact, if I understand
correctly, Rene in Journalism recommends students not complete the liberal
arts degree but only the AGEC-A because of prerequisite sequencing for her
major. It doesn’t make sense for a journalism student to transfer 64 units
when they are going to be at the UA for three years in a structured program
anyway.

Another thing that makes this more complicated is the vast number of
students here at Pima who have no idea what they want to do. This is one of
our biggest challenges and one that we are giving more and more discussion
to. If students are transferring with a bunch of useless courses it may be
because they have been bouncing around majors or are just unfocused. We are
always working on that one.

There’s also all of the developmental education courses many Pima students
have to take that up the number of units they complete. Ann, however, is
probably not referring to those in her email. I don’t think, although I
could be wrong, that those are showing up at all in the UA system because
they don’t transfer.

As I know you know, there is a huge amount of information and caveats our
academic advisors are responsible for. The more we collaborate with our UA
colleagues the better we will be able to help our students get the most out
of their education. That’ why this discussion is so important.

I often refer students who know what they want to study and know they want
to go to the UA to make contact with their UA advisor. They get mixed
receptions.

Furthermore, some UA programs have great information for prospective
transfer students on their website or offer information sessions on a
regular basis. Others offer very little. The more we can support our
transfer students as a team, the better for everyone, especially our
students.

I hope that clears things up. Please let me know if you have other
questions.

Take care of yourself!

Michael

Michael J. Tearne

Student Services Coordinator

Pima Community College, Desert Vista Campus

mtearne @pima.edu

(520)206-5156

"The universe is wider than our views of it." - Henry David Thoreau

From: <Samuelson>, Ann Samuelson <anns at email.arizona.edu>
Date: Wednesday, December 19, 2012 9:09 AM
To: "upac-request at list.arizona.edu" <upac-request at list.arizona.edu>
Subject: Advising Symposium Thanks and Questions

Hi.  I wanted to thank everyone who worked on organizing the symposium or
volunteer there yesterday — it was really great and I think I learned a lot.

The most interesting part to me was the presentations by the Provosts.  It
raise more questions for me than answers, however.  For those who were not
there, the Provosts said that they were seeing a shift nationally in funding
from focusing on counting the number of students attending school to
focusing on the number of students who actually graduated from school — to
"outcomes".   I asked what an "outcome" was for the Community Colleges,
because for many of us in the advising field an "outcome" for a community
college student is not an Associates Degree, but is really an AGEC.  Also, I
mentioned that I've had students in my office complaining that the advisors
a Pima insisted that they earn an Associates Degree and that they felt they
had wasted time earning that degree when they could have just gone straight
for an AGEC.  The PCC Provost seemed to suggest that to them an "outcome"
was definitely an Associates Degree but that they were talking about making
the AGEC a certificate program(?).  

After the program concluded, a Pima advisor came up to me and said the
reason Pima Advisors steer students towards an Associates Degree is that
they are not eligible for financial aid if they just go for an AGEC.   Does
anyone know if this is true?  It seems odd to me since the only purpose I
know of for an AGEC is to allow students to transfer into a four-year
program and continue a student's program until they get a four-year degree.
Why would they not be allowed to use financial aid — since by default they
must be going for a 4-year degree? We don't exclude our students from the
first year or two of financial aid.   If it is true that Pima students must
be working towards a degree to get financial aid, is there anyway to change
it so students don't have to go for an Associates Degree if they want to
transfer?

I was reviewing the requirements for an AGEC this morning and realized that
it only takes 35 credits to earn an AGEC — I rarely have students who
transfer from a Community College with an AGEC who have earned less than 50
credits.  It seems kind of odd to me that an AGEC is not constructed in such
as way as to make an Associates Degree and an AGEC equivalent — a liberal
arts or science Associates degree.  In thinking about it, having it set at
35 credits is something of a mixed bag, because if a student earns only 35
credits and transfers here, they lose the tuition cost that they are saving
by taking more credits at Pima instead of here because they then have to pay
for a (potentially extra) 29 credits  here, rather than at Pima (64 max
credits at CC –35 AGEC credits)— so maybe encouraging them to stay at Pima
is a good thing?

I'm pretty naïve about all this, so if you have more information and can
shed some light on why the AGEC and Associates relationship is constructed
as it is and (if it's true) why CC students can't get financial aid for an
AGEC,  I'd be really interested.

Best,  Ann

Ann Samuelson, M.A, Anthropology

Academic Advisor

School of Anthropology, UA

Haury Anthropology Building

PO Box 210030

Tucson, AZ 85721-0030

(520) 626-6027 

 <mailto:anns at email.arizona.edu> anns at email.arizona.edu

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