ARTICLE TOOLS

E-mail story

Comments

Printer friendly version

iPod friendly version

Share This

Text Size: A A A A

UTC, Chattanooga State sign transfer pact

By: Joan Garrett
(Contact)

Included in this article

Phil Oldham

UTC and Chattanooga State have signed an agreement to allow students with associate degrees from the community college to enter the university’s four-year programs as juniors.

Officials at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga say they hope the agreement will slow the growth of freshman classes that may be too large for the campus to accommodate.

“This is a milestone,” said Phil Oldham, UTC provost. “It puts a flag in the ground that says we openly welcome students from Chattanooga State.”

Dr. Jim Catanzaro, president of Chattanooga State Technical Community College, said Thursday at an announcement of the agreement that officials “are delighted this day has come. We have been seeking this day on all sides.”

UTC’s enrollment has grown by 17.9 percent in the past eight years, and the university has struggled to find space for its swelling population. Parking, classroom space and on-campus housing are tighter than ever before, officials said.

At the same time, UTC officials likely will have to postpone expansion because of the state’s budget crisis, they said.

By creating an easier transfer process, more students may begin their college careers at Chattanooga State and give UTC much-needed capacity in its freshman and sophomore classes, Dr. Oldham said.

The agreement also may help to increase the number of students in UTC’s junior and senior classes, where there are seats available, he said.

More than 550 students transferred from other schools to UTC last year, according to the university’s Web site.

“We want to clean that pipeline,” Dr. Catanzaro said.

Dr. Catanzaro said the two institutions had made agreements in the past but never quite gotten them right. The new agreement hopefully will remove obstacles that had frustrated students in the past, he said.

In the future, the agreement will allow the two schools to act “as if we were the same institution,” Dr. Catanzaro said.

While families struggle to afford higher education as tuition costs climb at Board of Regents and University of Tennessee schools, both Dr. Oldham and Dr. Catanzaro said the new transfer agreement could lower costs.

Students can begin their educations at Chattanooga State, where tuition is cheaper than UTC, then transfer to the university for higher-level classes to finish their four-year degrees, they said.

Comments