Cal Poly PomonaConsulting Report

Prepared byPaul Robinson

University of MichiganExecutive Director and University RegistrarAACRAO Consultant

October 8 - 10, 2007

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Executive Summary

Associate Vice President Kathleen Street initiated an external reviewof Cal Poly Pomona’s course articulation polices and practices. Course articulation plays an integral part in students’ transferexperiences. During the three day consultation, AACRAO consultantPaul Robinson from the University of Michigan met with faculty andstaff from Cal Poly Pomona (CPP) as well as numerous articulationofficers from California Community Colleges representing regions7, 8 and 9.

The observations and recommendations in this report appear in thefollowing categories:

a. Observations on relations with Cal Poly Pomona’s external articulation partners

b. Observations on relations with Cal Poly Pomona’s internal articulation partners

c. Observations on current status of articulation agreementsd. Recommendations and next steps

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Executive Summary, continued

There was consensus that Cal Poly Pomona has and continues to make improvements in developing, building and maintainingarticulation agreements. During the past two years much progresshas been made by staff in Cal Poly Pomona’s Registrar’s Office toupdate the state-wide ASSIST system and the University studentinformation system (Oracle/PeopleSoft) with the articulationinformation used by students, faculty and staff. Feedback from CalPoly Pomona’s primary feeder Community Colleges supports theseobservations. Internal staff and faculty from Cal Poly also providedpositive comments on the processes related to establishing andmaintaining articulation agreements. Other topics discussed includedissues surrounding what is referred to as “dirty general education,”the various paths students can follow to transfer coursework, and themerits of moving to multi-year articulation agreements.

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Executive Summary, continued

Cal Poly Pomona still has a great amount of work to be done to develop and build the full complement of articulation agreements. The current approach gives priority to building agreements withinstitutions that provide the most transfer students to Cal PolyPomona. California Community Colleges in regions 7, 8 and 9 tendto provide the highest number of transfer students to Cal PolyPomona. Analysis of the status of articulation agreements betweenCal Poly Pomona and the California Community Colleges indicatesthe majority are “in-progress.” Updated articulation agreements arein place for approximately 26 of the 110 California CommunityColleges. An additional 70 articulation agreements are “in progress.” There are 14 California Community Colleges for which there are noagreements. More detailed information on the status of thesearticulation agreements along with an estimated timeline forcompletion is provided later in this report.

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Executive Summary, continued

As more articulation agreements are developed and entered intoASSIST there is a corresponding workload increase for other areas inthe Office of the Registrar. Those most directly impacted include staffin the areas supporting transfer credit, evaluation and degree audit. Cal Poly Pomona should combine the units responsible forarticulation, transfer credit, evaluation and degree audit to reportunder one Associate Registrar. Staff could be cross-trained resultingin a better understanding of the interdependence between processesand would be positioned to support each other during peak periods.

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Executive Summary, continued

Cal Poly Pomona should develop a detailed project plan for completing a prioritized list of articulation agreements. Gettingcaught up will treating the outstanding work more as a project, whichInvolves identifying all the detailed tasks and their dependencies. There are opportunities to gain efficiencies that will result in improvingthe transfer credit experience for students, faculty and staff. Many ofthe “in progress” articulation agreements are for the years 2004-2005and earlier. The time and resources required to complete all currentand prior year agreements is significant. At current staffing levels it isestimated to take between 18 and 24 months to complete. Amitigation strategy would be to focus on building articulationagreements for the two most recent cycles first (e.g. 2005-2006 and2006-2007) and to add an additional staff person. Employing thistype of mitigation strategy should reduce the time to complete themost current articulation agreements to approximately six to ninemonths.

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Executive Summary, continued

Consideration should be given to improving the internal process for identifying and sharing curriculum changes that impact “major” anddegree requirements. Having a concise listing of how the curriculumchanges affect major and degree requirements will assist in theprocess of updating articulation agreements more efficiently.

Cal Poly Pomona should identify benchmarking and assessment datato be used to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of thearticulation and transfer credit processes. Identify “time to degreecompletion for transfer students,” “number of current complete articulation agreements by institution,” “successful course and degreecompletion for transfer students,” “transfer students’ satisfaction withthe CPP transfer process,” and “regular systemic feedback from Community College Articulation Officers and CPP advisors andfaculty on articulation and transfer credit” should form the basis forCal Poly’s assessment data.

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Overview

The three-day consult involved a review of processes and practices as well as discussions with key stakeholders. A complete listing of meeting participants can be found in Attachment A. Included in the review and discussions were:

General review of how articulation is organized in the State of California

General review of how articulation is organized at Cal Poly Pomona

Discussion with key staff in the Registrar’s Office Meeting with articulation officers for select California Community Colleges

Meeting with Cal Poly Pomona departmental advisors

Meeting with Cal Poly Pomona chairpersons and key administrators Exit interview with Cal Poly’s Dr. Kathy Street and Dr. Doug Freer

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Overview, continued

Mr. Rod Short, Associate Director for Enrollment Services atCal Poly Pomona, served as project manager and facilitatedall meetings. Mr. Short was instrumental in ensuring themeetings and discussions were pertinent and productive. Mr.Jose Lozano, Articulation Officer at Cal Poly Pomona attendedall meetings and provided valuable input and insight throughout theconsult. A great deal of background materials and resources weremade available to the AACRAO consultant. California CommunityCollege articulation officers who participated in the meetings anddiscussions provided insightful comments in a professional mannerthat was constructive to the topic. Cal Poly Pomona staff and facultyalso provided valuable input and observations as it related to theirexperiences with course articulation – covering matters that emanateat the Community Colleges as well as those internal to Cal PolyPomona.

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General Observations

Cal Poly Pomona shares the goal with California Community Colleges

to provide complete and up-to-date course articulation agreements

that are accessible and understandable to students, advisors, and

faculty. Key to achieving this goal is to develop full articulation

agreements with California Community Colleges and other two and

four year institutions. The state-wide ASSIST system is the

repository for articulation agreement information used by California’s

two and four year higher education institutions.

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General Observations, continued

Articulation agreements benefit students by providing “road maps”to follow to help ensure academic preparation at CSU institutionswhile also decreasing time to graduation. Institutions benefit bygaining qualified students who can complete their studies. When articulation agreements are in place students have higherconfidence their coursework will be accepted by another institutionand may be more likely to transfer.

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General Observations, continued

A few common themes emerged during the course of this review. Nearly everyone noted the improvements Cal Poly Pomona hasmade in developing and putting articulation agreements on ASSIST.At the same time there is a sense that more needs to be done soonerto address the needs of transfer students. It is a challenge to balancethe competing needs of the Community Colleges with the competingpriorities and academic demands at an institution like Cal PolyPomona. The Community Colleges want full agreements in placewith all CSU institutions. Cal Poly Pomona must prioritize the use ofits resources to maximize effectiveness. It is difficult to estimate howlong it will take Cal Poly Pomona to get caught up with articulationagreements with their primary feeder institutions. This in partis due to the sheer number and agreements needing updates thatspan back several years or cycles. There is recognition that as more articulation agreements are developed the workload of staff in theunits of transfer credit, evaluation and degree audit increase.

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Community College Articulation Officers

Articulation Officers from several California Community Colleges wereinvited to discuss their experiences in working with Cal Poly Pomona.The general consensus is that Cal Poly Pomona has made steadyprogress in developing and maintaining articulation agreements. Inparticular there were comments about the steady progress they haveseen in Cal Poly getting more articulation agreement informationupdated on ASSIST. It was noted that to the extent articulationagreements are on ASSIST students and advisors will rely on it evenmore. Several participants commented on the importance of Cal Polyputting “major” requirements on ASSIST. There were specificcomments provided by the Community College AO’s that are worthnoting, including:

Cal Poly Pomona’s Articulation Officer Jose Lozano has established good working relationships with AO’s at the Community Colleges.

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Community College Articulation Officers, continued Cal Poly Pomona’s Articulation Officer Jose Lozano’s presence

and work with regional and state groups (e.g. SCHEC) improves communication between institutions on important matters affecting articulation.

Cal Poly Pomona seems to have made good progress in getting the “major” information into ASSIST.

The issue of “Dirty General Education” was noted by several Community College AO’s. They cited problems students

experience when they have to take additional classes to meet general education requirements. Examples provided included

Cal Poly’s U.S. History requirement; Civil Engineering’s Chemistry requirements; and confusion over Cal Poly’s “critical thinking”

requirements. Two Community College AO’s also referred to “pass along” problems – cases where Cal Poly Gen Ed coursework is accepted at a California Community College but not transferable when the student returns to Cal Poly Pomona.

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Community College Articulation Officers, continued Community College AO’s suggested updating/noting in ASSIST

those “major” requirements that have special general education requirements. The more information students and advisors can see on ASSIST for Cal Poly Pomona’s unique major and degree requirements the better. San Marcos was used as an example of an institution that does this well in ASSIST.

Community College AO’s asked several questions regarding the relationship and status of the Lower Division Transfer Pattern (LDTP) to other transfer paths such as the CSU Breadth General Education and the Integrated General Education Transfer Curriculum (IGETC). Community College AO’s wanted to know when Cal Poly would be accepting LDTP students. Community College AO’s also expressed concern about having to get courses approved for LDTP as opposed to having them “grandfathered” in.

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Community College Articulation Officers, continued Community College AO’s indicated they want more information

(and sooner) on courses not approved for articulation so they can better understand the reason(s). They would share this information with their faculty so they could possibly make changes to the course content and/or curriculum so as to satisfy Cal Poly Pomona requirements.

Community College AO’s asked about the possibility of all CSU institutions of adopting a common template to be used in the course articulation approval process. They noted what they perceived to be the inefficiencies with the current process that relies on individual e-mails to each CSU Articulation Officer.

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Community College Articulation Officers, continued Community College AO’s singled out San Bernardino as doing

well in most aspects of establishing and maintaining articulation agreements and updating the information in ASSIST. In the UC system they noted UC-Riverside, UC-Berkeley and UC-Davis as being very current with their information in ASSIST.

Community College AO’s discussed the pros and cons of Cal Poly Pomona going to multi-year articulation agreements. The consensus from the Community Colleges was maintaining articulation agreements that are updated annually is more desirable. It was mentioned that UC-Irvine experimented with a cycle where articulation agreements were updated every two years. But the Community College AO’s felt this was problematic as there seemed to be more instances where the agreements were not in sync with the university’s bulletin.

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Community College Articulation Officers, continued Community College AO’s singled out San Bernardino’s AO (Mr.

Bob Sperry) as being very effective in establishing and maintaining articulation agreements. They noted Mr. Sperry seemed to have the authority to make decisions on articulation agreement on behalf of his institution – thus making the process more effective and efficient. The Community College AO’s did emphasize Mr. Sperry has been in his role for many years and has gained the confidence of faculty in the departments to make such decisions.

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Cal Poly Pomona Advisors and Faculty

Staff advisors and faculty from Cal Poly Pomona departments sharedtheir observations as they related to course articulation. Like theCommunity College AO’s, most indicated there has been goodprogress in getting articulation agreements developed and posted onASSIST. Faculty indicated the processes for approving articulationagreements is iterative – often involving requesting more information regarding the course(s) from the Community College before adecision can be made. Some faculty voiced concern about being able to make an accurate assessment of Community Collegecourses without a better understanding of course content and methodof delivery. Staff in the Office of the Registrar who support transfercredit, evaluation and degree audit also provided valuable insight.Key among their observations was the recognition of the workinvolved supporting articulation.

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Cal Poly Pomona Advisors and Faculty, continuedStaff assigned to transfer credit, evaluation and degree audit mustbuild and maintain tables and rules in Cal Poly Pomona’s PeopleSoftstudent system. Among the many good comments and observationsseveral stand out, including:

There has been a noticeable improvement in the turnaround time for getting articulation agreements approved at Cal Poly Pomona. The process whereby the Cal Poly AO submits new articulation requests electronically to departments is much more effective.

Advisors and Outreach staff at Cal Poly use and value the information in ASSIST. They also commented on the importance of having articulation agreements and transfer credit rules built for other four-year institutions.

Advisors and Outreach staff at Cal Poly considered the process for submitting petitions for course approvals as working well.

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Cal Poly Pomona Advisors and Faculty, continued Cal Poly faculty and chairpersons noted they often need more

information on the content of the courses from Community Colleges and other institutions before they can approve any agreements. Obtaining a course syllabus and understanding the method of delivery (e.g. in-person, online, combination of the two) would be helpful to know in many cases.

Cal Poly faculty noted that it should be understood there may be cases where transfer students have to take additional coursework to meet major and degree requirements (e.g. Cal Poly’s American History 202 requirement).

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Cal Poly Pomona Advisors and Faculty, continued Cal Poly Evaluators may award “elective credit” for incoming

transfer work where no articulation agreement exists or no transfer credit rule has been built in the student system. There are also instances where course agreements have been approved but not yet updated in ASSIST. The evaluators do not know which courses have not been approved or approved and not entered in ASSIST. It is important to have the transfer credit and degree audit rules updated in Cal Poly Pomona’s PeopleSoft student system for all approved articulation agreements.

Staff in the Office of the Registrar noted the backlog of work to be completed to update the tables and rules in Cal Poly Pomona’s PeopleSoft student system that support transfer credit and degree audit. As new articulation agreements are developed or existing agreements updated, corresponding work needs to be done in the PeopleSoft student system.

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Cal Poly Pomona Advisors and Faculty, continued Staff in the Office of the Registrar indicated it often takes a lot of

time and research to determine which major or degree requirements are impacted when they receive curriculum change information from Academic Affairs.

The current practice where Cal Poly Pomona writes transfer credit rules for non-baccalaureate courses should be reviewed. Advisors and students often want to see all courses on their transcripts – including those not accepted for transfer credit.

The California Course Articulation Numbering System (CAN) will be replaced by another course numbering system (TSCU Numbering) as part of LDTP. Even though the CAN office officially closed in July 2005 this numbering system will continue to be honored until 2009-2010. Managing CAN and TSCU presents challenges for Cal Poly Pomona and California Community College Articulation Officers.

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Cal Poly Pomona Advisors and Faculty, continued Cal Poly Pomona’s Articulation Officer hears concerns from

California Community Colleges regarding courses not approved as part of LDTP. Broadly speaking there are issues and questions surrounding LDTP – ranging from when will the first students transfer to Cal Poly to how long CAN will be honored.

It was noted the UC institutions never used CAN and thus California Community Colleges experiences with them may be inherently more positive. The UC institutions are adopting a new transfer pattern (Streamlining/Transfer Preparation Paths) that is distinct from LDTP. This UC pathway for accepting lower division transfer work is being implemented sooner than LDTP and the seemingly fewer issues.

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Status of Articulation Agreements

Cal Poly Pomona receives transfer students from in-state schools and colleges, out-state schools and colleges and internationalinstitutions. The majority of transfer students Cal Poly Pomona receives come from California Community Colleges. Cal PolyPomona’s academic majors can be highly specialized which cancomplicate the transfer process.

There are several paths a student can follow when transferring to a CSU institution. These paths include:

CSU Breadth General Education (Executive Orders 405 and 595) Intersegmental General Education Transfer Curriculum (IGETC) Lower Division Transfer Plan (LDTP) Transfer Admission Guarantee (TAG) Transfer Admission Agreements (TAA)

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Status of Articulation Agreements

There are 110 California Community Colleges for which Cal Poly

Pomona can receive transfer students. The tables that follow depict

the status of articulation agreements with these institutions and then

an estimated timeline for completion assuming current staffing levels

remain constant. It should be noted the completion times are

estimated based upon past experience in developing and updating

similar agreements.

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Cal Poly Articulation Agreement Status

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Type Agreement

Full Partial Total

Updated/Current1 14 12 26

In-Progress2 21 49 70

No Agreements3 0 14 14

35 75 110

1The 14 Full and 12 Partial agreements updated are for the 2006-07 cycle2Out of the 21 Full agreements needing updates, 10 are from 2004-05 and 11 are older3There are 14 California Community Colleges for which there are no agreements

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Status of Articulation Agreements, continuedAt present, no agreements have been updated for the 2007-2008cycle. This is explainable in that Cal Poly’s articulation officer isupdating the templates used in gathering the information to be put onASSIST.

For the 2006-2007 cycle, updated articulation agreements are inplace for 26 of the 110 California Community Colleges. Of these 26agreements 14 are “full” and 12 are “partial.” Again for the 2006-2007 cycle, there are 21 “full” and 49 “partial”agreements that are in-progress (i.e. currently being worked on). Ofthe 21 “full” agreements in-progress, 10 are for the year/cycle 2004-2005 while 11 are older. Some of the 49 “partial” agreementsgo back to the 1995 year/cycle. Updating older articulationagreements take more time to update. There are 14 agreements that have not been initiated.

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Estimated Timeline – Articulation Agreements

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Full Partial Total

Updated/Current1 14 12 26

est. person days n/a n/a n/a

In-Progress2 21 49 70

est. person days 210 392 602

No Agreements3 0 14 14

est. person days tbd tbd tbd

Total est. days 210 392 602

1Already built, no estimate required211 of the 21 “full” are for years prior to 2004-05 which require more time to complete3There are 14 California Community Colleges for which there are no agreements and no estimate for completion

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Status of Articulation Agreements, continuedBased upon estimates provided by Cal Poly Pomona’s articulation officer, it will take between 18 and 24 months to complete thearticulation agreements with the California Community Colleges. These estimates assume existing staff levels remain constant. However, if Cal Poly Pomona takes steps to better organize and manage the tasks associated with developing articulation agreementsit seems reasonable to reduce this completion time to 12 to 16months. If an additional staff resource is added to assist with articulation, transfer credit and degree audit the time for completioncould be further reduced to 6 to 9 months.

Updating older articulation agreements takes a significant amount of time – especially to bring them to “full” status. The Cal Polyarticulation officer works with departmental chairpersons on sucharticulation agreements. The departmental chairpersons make thefinal decision whether or not to articulate any course.

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Status of Articulation Agreements, continuedAs new articulations agreements are developed or existingagreements updated there is corresponding work that impacts theareas of transfer credit, evaluation and degree audit. Within Cal PolyPomona’s PeopleSoft student system various tables and rulessupporting transfer credit and degree audit must be updated. Thus toprovide the full complement of information to transfer students andfaculty/staff requires also addressing the workload in the areas oftransfer credit and degree audit.

Currently there is a backlog of work related to building externaltransfer credit and degree audit rules in the PeopleSoft studentsystem.

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Recommendations and Next Steps

There are several key recommendations and next steps Cal Poly Pomona can take to address the issues surrounding coursearticulation and the transfer student experience.

Determining a Starting Point for Updating Articulation Agreements

The amount of work and resources required to update articulation agreements and the associated tables in Cal Poly Pomona’s student information system is significant. Many of the “in-progress” articulation agreements are for years prior to 2006-2007. It is recommended that Cal Poly Pomona focus on updating those articulation agreements that impact the highest number and/or percentage of potential and actual transfer students. A mitigation strategy focusing on building full articulation agreements are updated priority should be given to keeping them current.

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Recommendations and Next Steps, continuedDevelop A Project Plan

Cal Poly Pomona should develop a detailed project plan for completing a prioritized list of articulation agreements. To get caught up will require treating the outstanding work more as a project, which involves identifying all the detailed tasks and their dependencies. A standardized project status report should be developed and distributed to key stakeholders on a regular (e.g. quarterly) basis.

Change Organizational Reporting Lines in Office of the Registrar

The staff who support the processes of articulation, transfer credit, evaluation and degree audit should be combined and report to the same (one) Associate Registrar. This change is being recommended to reflect the interdependence between these processes. A suggested organizational structure for Cal Poly Pomona’s Office of the Registrar would be to have an Associate Registrar who oversees Articulation, Transfer Credit, Evaluation and Degree Audit. A second Associate Registrar would be responsible for Records, Registration and Student Services.

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Recommendations and Next Steps, continuedChanges to Job Responsibilities for Cal Poly Pamona’s Articulation Officer

The responsibilities of the Articulation Officer should be changed to include more support for transfer credit and degree audit work in Cal Poly Pomona’s PeopleSoft system. The Articulation Officer is well positioned to decide which courses should or should not satisfy General Education requirements for those cases where no transfer credit rule exists in student systems. Becoming more knowledgeable and involved with building and supporting Cal Poly Pomona’s PeopleSoft degree audit system will be beneficial.

Add Additional Staff

Add a staff resource to assist with articulation, transfer credit and degree audit work. This new staff person would split his/her time between supporting articulation agreements and transfer credit rule building in Cal Poly Pomona’s PeopleSoft student system. Initially this position could be “temporary” with an evaluation of its role at six month intervals. If there are available resources, Cal Poly should consider adding a second staff resource as this would lessen the time required to complete the supporting work in articulation, transfer credit and degree audit.

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Recommendations and Next Steps, continuedPlace More Cal Poly Pomona Curriculum Information on ASSIST

It is recommended that Cal Poly Pomona include additional information on ASSIST as it relates to specific “major” requirements. Having more detailed information for those majors that may have special general education requirements would be helpful to students and advisors. Cal Poly should also explore including a link to the internal curriculum sheets and the “major roadmaps” on ASSIST, which could then be accessed, by students and advisors.

Update Articulation Agreements Annually

The consensus from Community College AO’s as well as Cal Poly Pomona faculty and staff was to update articulation agreements on an annual basis. There was good discussion on the pros and cons of moving to a multi-year update schedule but most felt single year agreements served everyone better.

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Recommendations and Next Steps, continuedDevelop New Management and Operations Support Reports

One of the goals of this external review was to identify quantifiable indices that could be used to assess the effectiveness of Cal PolyPomona’s articulation practices. While articulation, transfer credit,evaluation and degree audit functions are commonplace at today’suniversities there does not seem to be an agreed upon set of suchindices. Regardless, there is a need to put effort into identifying anddeveloping meaningful criteria that can be used to monitor andassess program effectiveness. Some suggested steps for identifyingand developing such measurements should include:

Developing a report that lists Cal Poly Pomona articulation partners by organization by status (i.e., complete and full, in-progress, not started, etc.) This report could serve as a baseline for monitoring the status of articulation agreements. Developing such a report should be a high priority for Cal Poly Pomona.

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Recommendations and Next Steps, continued Developing a report that lists course transfer credit rules built in

Cal Poly Pomona’s PeopleSoft system by external institution.

Developing a report that lists changes to Cal Poly Pomona major and degree requirements. This report could be arranged by academic major. This report would be used to identify changes that impact articulation agreements, transfer credit rules, and degree audit rules.

Developing a report that tracks time to degree for Cal Poly Pomona transfer students. This could be a cohort-based report (e.g., start with incoming transfer students in Fall quarter) and be arrayed by transferring institution (i.e., external institution).

Developing a report that examines transfer student success rates (e.g., satisfactory completion of course, major and degree work) by transferring institution.

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Attachment AArticulation Review Participants

Cal Poly Pomona • Dr. Doug Freer, Vice President for Student Affairs• Kathleen Street, Associate Vice President for Enrollment Services• Rod Short, Associate Director for Enrollment Services• Jose Lozano, Articulation Officer•  • Maria L. Martinez, Associate Registrar• Maria Kupferschmidt, Encoder•  • Richette Bell – Director of Student Outreach and Visitor Information Services• Mario Cordova, Admissions Counselor• Pam Adams, Advisor – College of Business Administration• Pam Hester, Advisor – College of Science•  • Dr. Claudia Pinter-Lucke, Associate Vice President – Undergraduate Studies• Dr. Frank Ewers – Biology• Dr. Pam Sperry, Biology• Dr. Lan Yang – Computer Science• Dr. Daniel Lewis – History• Dr. Steve Bryant – Liberal Studies• Francis Flores – Chemistry• Dr. Steve McCauley – Physics• Dr. Les Young, Associate Dean for the College of Agriculture• Dr. Hassan Halati – Operations Management 

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Attachment A, continuedArticulation Review Participants

California Community Colleges

• Jamaika Fowler – Articulation Specialist, Mt SAC• Trevor Rodriguez• Wanda Fulbright-Dennis – Articulation Officer, Mt SAC• Jeanne Howard – Director of Articulation and Matriculation, College of the Desert• Pamela James – Articulation Officer, Victor Valley College• Maggie Van Riper – Articulation Officer, Chaffey College• Manoj Wickremesinghe – Articulation Officer, Orange Coast College• Edward Martinez – Articulation Specialist, Pasadena City College• Cindy Parish – Articulation Officer, San Bernardino Valley College• Janet McCurdy – Transfer & Articulation Coordinator, Mt. San Jacinto College• Michelle Plug – Articulation Officer, Citrus College• Stacey Howard – Articulation Officer, Cypress College• Ken Matsuura – Articulation Officer, Cerritos College