Ithaca College and Tompkins Cortland Community College announced a new dual admission agreement April 10. The agreement establishes a clear pathway for students to enroll at TC3 for an associate’s degree, and then transfer to IC for two years to complete a bachelor’s degree.
The program will include pathways for students to obtain a bachelor’s degree in health sciences, psychology or biological sciences.
Melanie Stein, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, said the college already had articulation agreements — which outline a path for students to transfer credits earned at other institutions to a degree at IC — with nine other colleges or schools.
Stein said the college and TC3 had been discussing how to remove some of the barriers for students to transition from TC3 to IC for several years.
“We kept on asking ourselves, ‘How can we make it more seamless?’” Stein said. “At some point we got this idea, ‘Well, what if we actually did it at the very beginning … [so] they’re applying into a pathway where everything has been defined.’”
The dual admission agreement means that students can continue directly to IC after completing their associate’s degree at TC3, without having to submit a separate application or put down a deposit. Before they start at TC3, students will receive a four-year plan with the courses they need to take to make progress toward a bachelor’s degree at IC.
Stein said the program will allow students to complete most of their Integrative Core Curriculum requirements — including the perspectives and writing courses — at TC3.
Judith Pena-Shaff, professor and chair in the IC Department of Psychology, said she and Mary DePalma, professor in the IC Department of Psychology, have been working with psychology professors from TC3 to coordinate the pathway’s required courses.
Pena-Shaff said that without an articulation agreement, students often have to repeat courses that they took at other institutions because the course content or course level does not align.
“In the past, if you don’t have the right advising, you really cannot finish a program in four years, two years in a community college and two years here,” Pena-Shaff said. “So I think in the past, it was not cost-effective always to go first to a community college and then transfer to a four-year institution. I think this way might make it more affordable.”
All students enrolled in the program will receive an IC scholarship ranging from $15,000 to $36,000 per year. Students will also be paired with an adviser from IC and from TC3 to help plan their courses.
Jean Hardwick, professor and chair of the IC Department of Biology, said IC and TC3 faculty are still finalizing the advising details, but they all agree that it is essential for IC faculty to get to know students before they arrive on campus.
“We want to talk to them, just have a meeting and try and ease that integration, have them come to campus a couple times, maybe, come to participate and see what’s happening,” Hardwick said. “The more we communicate with them, the easier their transition will be, because there won’t be any surprises waiting for them, like, ‘oh, I should have taken that. I didn’t even think about that.’”
Pena-Shaff said she hopes the program will expand the diversity of learners on campus by encouraging nontraditional college students — like those raising families or working while taking classes — to pursue a four-year degree. Pena-Shaff said she enjoys it when age-diverse students, like Longview residents, take her courses because they add rich perspectives and experiences different from what typical 18-22-year-old undergraduate students have encountered.
In addition to increasing campus diversity, Stein said administrators recognize that enrolling mixed-age populations could provide another revenue source for the college.
“It’s a population that IC otherwise might not see, because if these are students who, for one reason or another, are not ready to start off in a four-year school, we wouldn’t see them unless we were able to get them transferring in,” Stein said. “This is a way of making that transfer process much more targeted, seamless for the student … rather than sort of passively waiting for transfer students to come to us.”
