Gianni DiCrosta
Pierce College’s Academic Senate met today to discuss and resolve some of the issues plaguing the school’s transfer students, among other things.
President Joy McCaslin opened the meeting with encouraging news about the passage of President Obama’s healthcare bill. “Nearly a billion more dollars have been freed up for Pell Grants and financial aid with the passing of this healthcare reform.”
However, good and bad news seemed to come with all the day’s issues. Transfer Center Director Sunday Salter explained what may be causing people to believe that universities are decreasing the amount of transfer students they are accepting.
“Schools aren’t decreasing the amount of transfers they take, there is just an increasing amount of applicants.”
Articulation officer Elizabeth Atondo pointed out how schools like CSUN have a policy of taking students in the top 37 percent of the transfer community, in terms of GPA.
Salter later commented that some universities, such as UCLA, actually increased their number of transfer acceptances, but saw a significantly larger increase in applicants. She explained that as offered majors become impacted, schools begin to give priority to students who come from local schools, and also pay closer attention to GPA’s.
Salter is creating a Facebook account and a Twitter account to help students looking for information about transferring to four-year universities. The pages should be up very soon, but are still additions to the email updates students can receive by signing up on the Pierce College website.
Richard Skidmore also brought lukewarm news about the school’s Job Placement Center, but only after a quick reminder to the entire Academic Senate.
“It is a community college service that serves our college, but also our community.” He expressed his concern that some people may forget that 12 percent of the people who use the services there are not even students.
With that, Skidmore announced that the Job Placement Center would be holding another job fair on May 2, 2010.
However once again, bad news followed with the announcement that the Job Placement Center’s internship program would be coming to an end very shortly. While the program has placed 110 students in internships with 30 more waiting, funding would not allow for it to continue.
While a definite date was not announced, Skidmore said that it would be shutting down soon.
Information regarding the Academic Senate can be found at http://faculty.piercecollege.edu/senate/