Kaleb Poor – Staff Writer
University of Wyoming’s office of the Provost announced the launch of a new umbrella initiative on Thursday designed to aid transfer students bound for UW from the state’s community colleges.
Graduate Wyoming is rolling out as part of the University’s efforts to reach more students within the state and cement partnerships with seven Wyoming community colleges. The statewide cooperative program is designed to aid students transferring to UW.
“It’s building visible public connections in the curriculum that helps students move between one institution and another without losing credit or being disadvantaged compared to traditional-age freshmen who start at the University from scratch,” UW Transfer Relations Director Amanda Reeder said in an interview.
According to an email from the Office of the Provost to UW employees, roughly 40 percent of Wyoming’s student population was ineligible for the recently-launched 2+2 Plans, in which students split their time in a four-year degree plan evenly between UW and a partnered community college. Graduate Wyoming is designed to offer options to those excluded students.
“If 2+2’s are a screwdriver and course-to-course articulation is a hammer, sometimes you need a different tool for a different situation,” said Reeder. “What we know about transfer students is that they’re a pretty varied or diverse group in terms of how they present with their academic history.”
Students participating in the Graduate Wyoming initiative will have access to supporting resources that include advising services provided by UW, guides for understanding what credits will transfer to UW successfully, peer mentoring to connect and welcome students when they arrive at UW, and a “Reverse Transfer” program, in which students can finish an associate’s degree after leaving their community college.
The Graduate Wyoming initiative will also be rolling out new software platforms designed to make coordination between institutions more seamless, and Reeder hopes to see an overhaul of UW’s web page for transfer students into what she calls an “interactive one-stop shop” where people can utilize Graduate Wyoming’s resources, particularly transfer planning guides and the reverse transfer program.
“Even though it’s a wonderful things for students to earn their associate’s degree before they transfer, they don’t always do that, and 2+2’s will never work for that population, so we’re going to be working really hard developing a different kind of articulation project, which is reverse transfer.”
While Reeder describes the rollout of Graduate Wyoming as a “shift in focus” for UW’s transfer program, she emphasized that the program’s goals are to cement cooperation with Wyoming’s community colleges while giving transfer students a better opportunity to achieve graduation.
“If you’re an art student at the community college and you come here for art, you stay on the same path and the 2+2 help you connect those two Legos,” said Reeder. “But frequently someone who is an art student will decide they want to major in business or criminal justice when they come to UW, and 2+2’s don’t work effectively for that.”
