By Johnna Pinholster
August 21, 2008 11:32 pm
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VALDOSTA—Valdosta Technical College students can now transfer to Valdosta State University and have their core classes go with them.
The school received accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and Commission on Colleges earlier this year.
Degree core classes taken after Jan. 1, 2007, can be transferred to two-year colleges and four-year universities, said Jarrod Brogdon, Val Tech’s executive director of student affairs.
“This is the direction the entire technical college system is heading in,” Brogdon said. “We want our classes to compete and compare with those offered at a four-year university.”
Degree courses in anatomy and physiology, economics, psychology, English and math can currently be transferred to other colleges and universities from VTC.
Students who graduate from high school without receiving the HOPE scholarship have a chance to qualify for HOPE by coming to VTC and taking their entrance exam, Brogdon said.
If their scores are high enough, students can substitute degree courses for diploma courses and HOPE will help pay for their education, he said.
Diploma level core courses do not transfer.
In the future, VTC plans to include more transferable classes into their course catalogue.
By offering transferable core classes to their students we are allowing our students to have an equal education at a more affordable cost, Brogdon said.
The technical college went through a strenuous two-year process with SACS, which sent in a team to evaluate the instruction level of VTC’s educators, surveyed the college’s student affairs and checked other processes and policies to make sure that VTC met the appropriate standards, he said.
Each instructor teaching a core class is required to have at least a master’s degree in the area they are teaching in.
“Then they looked at all of our course syllabi to make sure that we were meeting their standards,” Brogdon said.
With the implementation of transferable courses, VTC definitely expects to see its enrollment to increase, he said.
In addition to being an affordable option for students, they have a chance to earn the HOPE scholarship after high school and learn in a smaller class-size environment, he said.
While the new accreditation hasn’t changed the cost of tuition, VTC did have to hire new teachers to teach the growing student population.
The initial accreditation was approved for five years. VTC will be required to reapply for accreditation in 2012.
More information about the transferable courses can be found at www.valdostatech.edu.
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