To partner with my good friend, Brandon Pirius, to cochair a a committee on transfer. We had paused that committee's work because the legislature was working on some things. We wanna give them a chance for that to play out. But between the audit transfer that we'll talk about today, and some continued interest in making transfer just a smoother, more transparent, and easier to navigate process for our students, we thought it appropriate to get this group back together. And I just wanna name, we've been very intentional about the diversity of voices on here. I think it's very easy for us to gather all the folks from the department
or the commission along with some folks from our institutions, and say we're gonna figure this out. We wanted to be thinking about transfer really broadly. Everything from what our students coming out of k 12 and early college are experiencing, what out of state or in state between four year to four year, two year to four year, or those bringing work based experiences, credentials, certificates, and military experience, what they're experiencing. We're we're quick to say we have the greatest policies in the country on transfer, and I don't disagree that in writing, we may well. We hear from students that it's not always their experience,
that that's the case. So we wanted to bring all of you together to tackle this. We're gonna do some introductions. I I will just name we're gonna spend a little bit time talking about what we must cover, because of the transfer audit and some recommendations, where we need this group to weigh in in a timely basis. But I also really wanna lean on all of you. Based on your experience, working with students, working with faculty, where do you see the pain points, that this group coming together should spend some time talking and where you think, what what are the things that would really make a difference for students and for
our institutions? So part of this, because some of us know each other, some people have not always been on these conversations, we're gonna do a round of introductions. And I'm gonna ask you to introduce yourself, where you work, a bit about the type of work you do. But I'd also love for you to name one or one or two things in how credits transfer, whether between k 12 to higher end and concurrent enrollment, AP, whether that's two year to four year or just institution to institution, program to program, what are one to two things where you see an opportunity to improve?
And that could be what's required. It could be policies. It could be how we provide support for our learners, or our institutions. But I'm just gonna kinda go around, the full group, and you're gonna get picked on by the order in which you are on my screen. So, Teresa, that means I'm gonna go to you first, and then, Emmanuel, to you. My name is Theresa Groff. I'm the registrar at Arapahoe Community College. So registrar sorry. Transcripts, actually evaluations come under me. We actually cover everything from, accepting students in and transferring them out, so I'm very versed with transfers coming in because it transfers in my office and
then students transferring out because they always ask us if there's an issue. So I usually got all the gambit of it. Two things one or two things, credit alignment. I know sometimes we don't have credit alignment between the two year institutions and the four year institutions, which I know creates some havoc when I've done some transcript evaluations. And, for me, also a little bit, expectations, the difference between transferability and applicability, I think is sometimes getting is lost especially with high school students and taking concurrent enrollment. My daughter is,
has done some stuff and so just understanding those two pieces of it, I think, is one of the biggest pieces. So that's my two. I appreciate that. Emmanuel and if I butcher anybody's name pronunciation, please correct me. I'll go to Emmanuel and then to Travis. Yeah. Hi. I'm Emmanuel Garza. Can you can you hear me okay? We can. Yes. Yeah. I work in Cherry Creek School to support our AVID program, which is college and career readiness. We have over 3,000 students. But I support college and career readiness as a whole, and I've been working on, like, credit summaries. And, usually, what Denver does is how do kids, before they graduate, get a report that says here are all your CE classes,
your AP classes, your IB classes, all the credits you took, how you passed, and how to order these transcripts so that you're ready, to get those ordered when you're when you're able, when you decide to go. But the bigger with that is, like Teresa mentioned, is what are you taking and why did you take them, and, what was it designed to do? I think, like, k 12, like, kids kids take college courses, like, menu of options, and they're just taking everything that they can. But a lot of courses are very specific, and and we don't really understand, a lot of times, like, hey. This is only part of a certificate.
Like, it's not really designed to transfer. If you are trying to go to a four year university, this isn't designed to do that. And, I had reached out to Christina a little bit about, like, how do we get to understand a little bit more to the point where teachers understand that very simply because they're the ones who have to teach the students. You know, ultimately sorry. No. Please continue. Yeah. So it's about students understanding and families understanding, but also the adults. If adults don't understand what they're designed to do, you know, that's kinda hard. And, like, one example that we have is a student who took, like, entrepreneurial entrepreneurship, from CREEC, that was offered to through Arapaho.
The the student always knew they were gonna go to Boulder and do business. It wasn't designed to transfer. I I kinda knew that just because I was a college advisor for a year, but the student didn't know that. Like, the teachers really didn't know that. And then I had asked the community college system, you know, who offers this and, like, is is it only offered who's offering it? Why are they offering it? Is it if it's only part of a certificate, how do we know that very clearly? Like, what data systems do you have that tie together? So I know it's hard because every institution gets its own island, you know, but how do we kinda get, you know, all those data systems together to really understand these courses very,
very simply, to explain to, like, a 12 year old through a 18 year old. I I really appreciate that that perspective and and naming that sometimes it's not the system or the policy. Sometimes it's the navigation. It's the counseling, and it's making sure people understand. I also hope that in the coming months, we tackle that issue of every institution being an island and find a way to connect all of them so it's easier to travel between them for our students. Let me go to Travis and then Mickey, please. Hello. My name is Travis Parkhurst.
I'm philosophy faculty at Pueblo Community College. I'm also the chair of the State Faculty Advisory Council, which is the chair governance group for the system. I'm also on, CPAC, the representative for Public Community College, the Colorado Faculty Advisory Council. Look, I'm gonna I'm gonna be really honest here. I I don't know a lot about the ins and outs of of transfer. I know it's important to have a faculty voice on here. I hope that I'm the right faculty voice. I wanna make that clear. Right? Because I don't deal a lot with transfer. I don't even do a lot of advising necessarily with students.
Now with that said, I've certainly heard stories over the years about courses that like, a logic course, take for instance, in my area, that doesn't necessarily transfer directly to a logic course at CCU Boulder, For instance, I've I've heard that in the past where they have to retake certain courses. Really, my biggest issues with transfer have had to do more with other areas that may be outside the purview of this committee, like, for instance, concurrent enrollment. Whether or not a concurrent enrollment class that's happening in a high school, for instance, is really the same as a, you know,
the same exact course in the college setting. And I can imagine, by extension, that that is an issue for certain four year schools as well. Is is the course that you're taking at a two year institution gonna really be the same qualitatively as the course that you're gonna get at a four year school? So I can understand that that's that's a a concern here if I use that as an analogy from high schools to two years, from two years to four years. And I assume that that's that why that's the basis of why, hey, we're having this conversation because certain colleges are making the determination that this isn't a
direct transfer from one to another, and then that's leading to some of the issues that we're trying to iron out here. The only other area that I have concerns regarding, transfer has to do with again, this is a system issue, not a state level issue, and that has to do with Colorado online between 13 community, 13, community colleges within the system. And when you take a course at one college versus another, whether it's easy just to move those credits from one course to another. So that's really the extent of my understanding of of, transfer. So I got a bit of a learning curve here if I'm really gonna be
the person to represent faculty. But I thank you for, for that and for that for being invited. Yeah. I I appreciate the candor. I appreciate you knowing it. I I think this is exactly what we want is we want folks that are way in the weeds, and we want people that are experiencing it kind of at that real level. And and to be clear, nothing you named should be off the table here. I'm thrilled we have people like Michelle Romero from CDE here. We intend on tackling this full spectrum. Those of you who know me, know I have no problem upsetting apple carts or or running my head into things
that people tell me is is the way it's always been. I I wanna find a way that it's not just that credit gets transferred, but that students know ahead of time or know how to know what's going to not only transfer, but what's going to apply to programs as they pursue and finding most transparent means. So, Travis, it's all on the table, and and we need every level, of involvement here. So I appreciate you. Let me go to Mickey and then Michelle Camacho. Hi, everyone. My name is Mickey Brooks. I'm the director of transfer success initiatives at CU Boulder.
I'm housed in our office of undergraduate education so more on the academic side of things, but I oversee recruitment and retention initiatives for transfer students. I would say specific to transfer credit I think a lot of I think what helps is so much I oversee our pre transfer advising team which is really helpful in supporting students and a lot of the articulation and evaluation that's already been done has been great. I think where we see hiccups is where students go to multiple institutions like multiple community colleges and there isn't someone who can take all that credit like do anything
with the credit. So we met with a student who has 90 credits from five different community colleges in Colorado and she just like was spinning her wheels and didn't know what she was doing. And so it's like those types of things of collaboration, communication, if we can have data sharing so that when students go through Colorado that it's not up on the students sometimes to, like, be the one like, she just didn't know. She she was just doing her thing. And so what are ways at the system level or at the state level that
we can help ensure that everyone is informed? And I think also and folks have mentioned this before, but just collaboration between institutions. We know how important it is that we talk to each other, remain in communication. We're talking about curriculum, about transfer credit, pathways, all that good stuff. Thank you, Matthew. Michelle and then doctor Pirius, please. Hi, y'all. Michelle Camacho Liu. I am the director of programs and policy at the Attainment Network. We support bringing together folks across the educational work force ecosystem, k 12, post secondary, and all the ways workforce to,
elevate career connected opportunities for learners. So in terms of where I'm seeing opportunity here, seeing Michelle, the other Michelle on the call, there's just so much need to get this even more right and better with, the big three kicking off and more and more, high school students gearing up to earn post secondary credits in addition to work based learning experiences and industry recognized credentials. And so getting that alignment, opportunity, the awareness, the data, I appreciate you bringing that up,
Mickey, is is really critical. And I'd just say overall kind of reducing the the burden on particularly learners, but also hopefully on institutions of the, you know, various documentation requirements and double and triple checking. And somebody has already approved this here, but then they go somewhere else, and it needs to go through the whole process again. Thank you, Michelle. Appreciate you being here. Doctor Pirius and then miss McCool. Thanks, Barrick. It's good to see you again.
So I'm Landon Pireas. When I worked with Barrick on this committee before, I was the vice chancellor for academic and student affairs for the community college system. Now I'm the president at Red Rocks Community College. Been in higher ed a long time, over twenty five years. And then transfer was an issue twenty five years ago, and it's an issue today. So I don't I'm hoping maybe this will help us. I don't remember who noted transferability versus applicability of credits, but I just wanna double that because I think that's important. But the two things that I had, one was I just wanna make a statement because I do believe that folks at
all institutions of higher ed are well intentioned and and they do a good job, trying to figure out and help support students. The concern I have is that, the students may come in those students who come in get that support. So if they walk into a registrar's office or an academic dean's office or whoever, a faculty member's office, and they say, hey. This course didn't transfer in, and I think it should have. Somehow through that conversation, usually it works out. So, so I think a lot of people are well intentioned.
They help students when the student comes in. What I get concerned about is the vast majority of students who never come in. They don't they they they just okay. I guess that's just what I get, and they go ahead and repeat courses because they didn't know that they could come in and ask questions about a transfer award or something like that. So that then is incumbent upon us as administrators to look at policies and practices and make sure that more students benefit than just those who happen to walk up
to our desks and ask a question. So to me, again, it's not about are people doing a bad job? Are they purposely trying to mess with students? That's not at all what I would say. I just think that standard practices, if a student, doesn't walk in, they sometimes don't get what they should get in terms of the transfer award. And the second thing I would say is really about data. And this is from a community college perspective. Obviously, we are largely sending our students to universities after they've been here for a while.
But we actually don't have any sense of how well our students do when they go to the universities. The universities know because they have the data. They can see that those students came from Red Rocks. They can see that they completed this English class or the logic class that that Travis mentioned. And they can they can run all these types of reports and and know that that, our courses are preparing those students successfully for transfer or not. But we don't get that. And so if we have a problem on our side, let's say that logic course that Travis is teaching is not sorry,
Travis. I know you, so I can use you as an example. You're not doing a good job teaching that class at Pueblo Community College. If we knew that, we could say, okay. Maybe we need to add something more to this course in order to better prepare them to transfer to CSU Pueblo. The universities know it. We don't. So I would like to have some sort of data sharing backwards so we know how well we are doing in our curriculum and how well our students are doing when they transfer. So we can make adjustments or we don't make adjustments when we know we're doing
just fine. And so, so a more robust data sharing backwards in the transfer process would be really helpful for those of us who prepare a lot of students for transfer. I appreciate that, Lynn. And and I see the the nods already. So let's go to MSU Denver, and we'll hear from you. And then, Patrick, we'll we'll bring you in. Hi. I'm Tamara McCool. I am the assistant registrar of transfer operations here at MSU Denver. So that means that I run the day to day operations of our transfer evaluation
team, taking a look at those transcripts and figuring out what we're gonna do. And the issue that I see kind of frequently is by the time students get to me to our office, there's not a lot of like, if the classes they took aren't what they needed, there's not a lot we can do at that moment. Like, it's it's kind of a done deal. They took, five arts and humanities classes, and we only needed two. And there's really not a lot we can do about that. So I always am thinking about that,
the early interventions, the early advising, and somebody spoke about it earlier, like, students are just taking classes, but they're not knowing, like, how that's going to affect. So I definitely think there's opportunity in early advising for students, and emphasis on what kind of that at least those students who know what they wanna do, make a plan of how to accomplish that. I think the idea of starting at a community college and then going to a four year school is to save you money. So but you kinda have to have a plan to do that.
And so I'm very interested in how we help students put together those plans. Thank you, Tamara, as am I. Patrick and then Pete, a little bit about the work you do, and what do you think are some of the most important things that we can do on transfer that would make a real difference for getting more students to complete through programs? Yeah. So I'm Patrick Talley. I'm the assistant dean for academic and curricular affairs in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. I'm also on GE Council. So and I've been on GE Council now for ten years,
so I've been deep in the weeds on a lot of this transfer stuff. And but the reason the person in my position is on GE council, even though I don't sit in a provost office, is most most of the transfer work, that comes at the CU Boulder is reviewed by the College of Arts and Sciences because most transfer work is kind of arts and sciences type of coursework. So we have a unit in the college that reviews things and and frankly, a lot of the work we do is for the college of engineering or the college of business because their students are coming in with math and microeconomics and physics
and stuff. So so that's one of the reasons why, and, yeah, I'm on, on that council even though I'm not sort of in a centralized provost office. And, like, I mean, at first, you said, well, what's what's a problem? I I don't know how to solve it, but from you know, first of all, CU Boulder sees transfer credit from all over the world. Like, we are, we're sort of and I talked to my colleagues and they're like, no. We we don't see things from small schools in Vermont, and we don't see transfer credit from, you know, colleges in Nepal and, you know, and we do.
We see transfer from all over, so we have a a a lot of different things. But within the state, one issue that we have is really somewhat with, it's it's transfer, but a lot of it, it's our incoming first year students who have taken transfer credit in the state. And I don't know how to exactly explain this, but the mixing together of, like, AP, IB, and concurrent, and then us trying to have to sort it out. Like, wait. That student got IB credit for that class, and they got concurrent credit from Colorado Mountain College, and they you know,
it's kinda like, wait a minute. Why are students in the same class sort of getting different kinds of credit? Or most recently, we had a student who took a dual enrollment class from CU Denver, but didn't pay CU Denver, so they didn't have the credits. And they wanted to know, well, why didn't we give them why didn't we credit them for these advanced math classes? I'm like, well, we don't have a transcript. It's just your high school transcript that said you did calculus three, but you didn't actually pay CU Denver to get the credit. So there's these sorts of things of there are issues with sort of the concurrent
AP, IB space and the credit being kinda jumbled up coming out of high school, Especially as more and more high school students are doing concurrent and dual enrollment in high school, and so they're coming you know, we're having to treat them as transfer students because they have a bunch of, you know, transfer credits. So and that's become more complicated, and, also, it's complicated when a class could be concurrent. It could be IB. It could be AP all at the same time. And that's sort of hard to hard to sort out,
like, well, what what what credit should we be granting them? So Thank you, Patrick. And I think that starts to highlight, bringing this diverse group together is going to make this more complicated. Mhmm. And I will tell you that's what I wanted. And I know that's what the department wanted. We wanted to not just take the easy pieces. We'll grab some of that low hanging fruit, but we wanted to tackle a a very angled web, that's complex and see if we can detangle it. I'm gonna go to Pete and then Michelle, and same thing. Let folks know a a little bit about what it is you do,
and then what are a couple of the pain points or the opportunities to make this more navigable, more straightforward, and more streamlined for our students. Pete and then Michelle. Yeah. Thank you, Barrett. I'm Pete Lundstrom. I'm the interim president, and provost at Community College of Denver. I've been, here different career, in construction industry prior to coming from higher education. So in some ways, I kinda feel like I'm like our students here at CCD. Even though I came from a, you know, a privileged background of growing up in Boulder and being there at CU and doing
all of my education, in in that area. So, the the things that I I bring in terms of, the views is certainly here at CCD, we work on a tri institutional campus, so we're working with the c with CU Denver and the CU system as well as with MSU Denver. And, there are different requirements. And so it it's it's these are our primary partners. Right? Most of our students go to MSU or the highest proportion transferred MSU to the next highest CU, and they each have different, core curriculum requirements that our students are trying to navigate.
And they may not know which one that they're going to as they're trying to navigate these things. So some of the just the graduation requirements and how that gets handled in transfer and can complicate transfer for our students. That's certainly one of the things that we're been trying to unpack here at CCD. And we at least are able to work directly with the partners because we just walk across to another building and actually sit down and have coffee and talk through these things. But it's still, you know, one of the the challenges that we are facing of of making sure that our students are able to move seamlessly,
towards their baccalaureate degree. The the main the the thing that I'm focusing on in terms of of challenges, we are we do a lot of competency, evaluation for our students. We're really, focused in on prior learning assessment. We call it momentum credit. We are moving into competency based education and, you know, figuring out, like, how can we focus more on competency rather than on experience of the class itself? Because I know that that often can as I think what Travis was, alluding to.
Right? There's just a different experience in different venues as you're getting that competency, but getting us to figure out how do we focus on what the student knows. And that that that's driving how we are dealing with transfer because, when we just get down into the weeds of lining up learning outcomes, looking at courses, and and doing the work at that level, it creates a lot of bureaucratic work that we're trying to do, and it can complicate for the students. Whereas in other spaces, we don't do that. We look at kind of the the holistic sense of what a student knows and
how they come in. Certainly, how we do graduate programs. We're not really doing, like, a course to course equivalency. But when you're looking at our associate's degree or or certificates, we often are doing that. So that's the area that I would like to see us be able to, tackle is how do we move into a a way that course equivalency, either we map it out and we have very clear course equivalency, or we're more focused in on, well, what what does what does students know as they're coming through so we're not making them repeat courses just because the course equivalency didn't map out.
And so then they're sitting in someone's class, and Travis can speak to this as all of us have been in the classroom. The worst thing you can have is someone in the classroom who already knows the stuff and is bored, and they shouldn't be there in the first place. And we're trying to make them go through just because they need to get the credit. Thanks, Pete. Michelle and then Carrie, same questions to you. Hi, everyone. I'm Michelle Romero. I'm the director of the Office of Postsecondary and Workforce Readiness, PWR, at the Colorado Department of Education. Happy to see some of of your faces. Yeah. So I I was hired here at CDE in 2019 when senate bill twenty nineteen
one seventy six, came about, and that that changed concurrent enrollment. So when I say concurrent enrollment, I think you all understand the the difference in that concurrent enrollment as a state program for college credit. It's been around since 2009. What that bill did in 2019 was tell districts, you can no longer charge students and families. And so that really opened up, I think, a lot of confusion, the floodgates. And then I think the issue with turnover with superintendents, principals, and school counselors really, really hurts when you've got new folks who may not understand,
how all of this works. And so what I have experienced for the most part when I hear you all of you talk about concurrent enrollment specifically is the the, just the patchwork of of concurrent enrollment courses. And what I hear from some folks is that there's just such a ton of pressure from students and families. I get to dictate what I want in my, trying to save money, trying to get an associate's degree before I before I, leave high school. So, you know, it takes a lot of work when you're dealing with so many new folks to say, actually,
you get to dictate, and there's a clear definition of concurrent enrollment. It's very specific. It is GT. It's it is statewide, transfer articulation. It's dev ed courses that that are prereqs. It's post secondary, CT approved pathways. So, it's it's tough when you've got a small office. We don't have a huge, you know, I think communications, channel or office. I've always said that while we get new initiatives, maybe we get FTE if we're lucky. We rarely get campaign kind of money. And so people often ask, well, we didn't know.
And it's like, but we really are operating on listservs. Right? And and we don't have a full database of, educators across the state. And so I would say that's our biggest barrier, for the most part is constantly updating people on all of the changes. I would also speak in terms of, AP and IB. I don't have a ton of experience with IB a whole lot, but in terms of AP and, again, safe space here, college board is you know, they they want in. And so, we don't have a state contract with college board. And so when we when we talk to them and we work with them,
it's just in in terms of, data. Right? And so, yeah, I I can't speak for them, but they are, very much interested in getting into the, two year space. Right? So they've got something called Kickstart. And so, yeah, I think it's it's a worthy partner to engage, but, I can't speak to the decision making behind district saying and I hear this, the blended classroom of APIB and college credit. And and, yeah, I think our students and families can be confused by all of that. So I will I will address that. And then the other part for dual enrollment,
and and you all know this too, I was in higher ed for a long time. I'm a former school counselor, and it helped me just like Emmanuel. It helped me as a school school counselor to have post secondary experience with this. So I could easily advise and guide my students, but that's not where school counselors get trained. And so I'll be completely honest, lack of training and it's not necessarily their jobs. I would say that too. You don't go be a school counselor to learn how to navigate, all the public and and private institutions, degree pathways. So, I will acknowledge that that that is a gap.
Not sure exactly how to, address it, but, yes, school counselors oftentimes just say, oh, you wanna take this class? Okay. Sign here, and and and then we make that happen. And then for dual, you all know too that there's a ton of out of state institutions just trying so hard to get in here. I get emails. I'm sure Carl gets emails too. How do we offer, concurrent or dual enrollment in your state? And so I just forward them over to to Carl, let him be the bad guy. But it it's a lot of pressure, a lot of interest. And so,
you know, me and my team, we we are on the road. We we just finished our our last regional training. I'm a rural kid, so I believe in going out into communities, and it has been a very success successful approach to talk to our rural schools specifically about the big three that Michelle mentioned. And if any of you don't know what that is, it's a new legislation to get our students 12 college credits, an industry recognized credential certification or work based learning and or work based learning, by the time they graduate. And so we're on the road, letting people know,
and there's a clear definition of what college credit is in this bill, and we highlight it's GT. It's post secondary CT. It's concurrent enrollment. And there is gonna be an APIB component to it, but it's not on course. It's it's exam. So we are still figuring out all those details, but happy to partner and continue this work with you all. And, yeah, you can address anything with me. I it's a safe space, and I I want just wanna help schools and students, figure this out just as much as you do. Thank you very much,
Michelle. Let me go to Carrie and then Linda. Excuse me. Linda. It's been a long day, Linda. My apologies. Hello. My name is Carrie Netzen. I'm the director of concurrent enrollment at NJC. Michelle, I'm sorry I missed you yesterday. Yesterday. I heard it was very good. I would say what I run into with transfer is a little bit more what brand what Landon was saying, and that sometimes, you know, we offer guaranteed transfer courses, and maybe the institution is not taking it because they need a syllabus or whatever is going on.
And oftentimes, if students come in here, we could help them and we could get it situated, and usually there's really no problems. The problem is what I often think about is who is not coming in here and just retaking classes. I know, like, from not even within the state of Colorado, my daughter took calculus here at, NJC and went to Emery Riddle in Prescott, Arizona, and they were gonna accept her calculus. And she was like, no, mom. I'm just gonna retake it. No, mom. I'm just gonna retake it. I just said, no.
Here's the syllabus. We'll go in, and you might have to retake it. And we'd be able to show them, and then they said, yes. This meets our standard. So she didn't have to retake it. But if she didn't have me as a mom, she would have just retaken a class. Thank you, Carrie. Shannon, good to see you. I'll go to Shannon and then Debbie. Cool. Was Linda next, or does she? Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. Linda, you disappeared on my screen. Oh, no worries. Can, can you hear me? Yep. Okay. Shannon, thank you. And, yes, Linda, we got you. I'll go to Linda and then Janet.
Okay. Thanks, Shannon. Hi, everybody. I'm Linda Van Doren. I'm at Emily Griffith Technical College. We are one of the three area technical colleges in Colorado, and we are part of Denver Public Schools. So we kind of live in that space of the blur, I guess, we could say. We serve over 10,000 students annually in CTE programs that are approved by the Colorado Community College System, registered apprenticeship programs where we are the related training and instruction provider, and we serve adult learners through our English language programs, adult high school diploma programs,
and GED preparation programs. That's kind of a nutshell who we are. For me, the the pain point and I love everything that everybody's saying. I think this is all fantastic stuff. For me, I'd like to I wanna kinda piggyback off off of something that Landon was talking about using data. Looking at and I'll just use the example of the CDHE ROI report. And I would love to know the through line, right, of the students who earn the certificates, then the the associates, and then kind of go on to the four year degree and see. Because if we look at the where the GT courses benefit students,
there are some of those students that are benefited by the GT pathways courses. But if we look at those certificate holders, a large number of them currently have no options for any kind of credit transfer, outside of policies that the community college system has implemented. So for me, it's looking at, again, the data. Let's look at where our impact is gonna happen. And then selfishly, it's working with, this group and others to look at something like a GT for CTE or applied. Any kind of credit transfer in the applied area,
the applied sciences doesn't exist currently. And again, going back to those kind of numbers in that ROI report, there's a large number of students that we are not serving, because we don't have the option for that transfer to happen. So I'm really excited about that. So using data, narrowing it on CT, and I'll just throw registered apprenticeships in there as well because that's another space that that I work in a lot. And I think that there is some good work happening. But, again, I'd like I'd like to not that I don't love everybody on this call, and I've worked with many of you. And there's a lot of relationships involved in program to program,
dean to dean, fact to fact in those non GT spaces. And I'd love to get rid of the people and just create a system that is more transfer friendly for more students. Thank you. Thank you, Linda. And I'm sorry I skipped over you when you went off camera. I lost you for a minute. Let me go to Shannon, and then, Debbie. Great. Hi. Hi, everybody. I'm Shannon Nicholas. I'm with an organization called Colorado Succeeds. We represent the business community, across the state and so grateful to be here and engage in these conversations. We were also part of several of the transfer pieces of legislation that the audit
looked at, and and grateful that you all are pulling a team like this together. I know I'm gonna learn a lot. I was excited to go after Linda because I figured we might be on the same page with what we are both passionate about here. More and more, we would love to see, more alignment between the employer based pathways and college success. We think all kids are college students. They just might take a different route to getting there. And so as we build out the big three in high school, we get more kids into postsecondary opportunities. I was just at the governor's EO,
briefing in terms of where that is all heading. We need a more aligned system, and I think that transfer plays an incredible role in that and an opportunity to make sure that learners have access to those credits as they engage in varying, career opportunities throughout their life. So interested in learning to how do we make that more of a system knowing that, it is based on lots of different agreements and lots of different institutional leaders at this stage, and first and foremost, how do we protect learners and making sure that they, again, get most access to their credit as possible.
And then I'm here to bring the business voice as both an advocacy community who can help elevate, how these opportunities could lead to higher paying jobs and higher paying, opportunities for for longer term success, but, also, they wanna roll up their sleeves and get involved. And I think a lot of them see the job opportunities that require some sort of post secondary, and they're eager to figure out how to get more learners into those pathways and to those opportunities. So, yes. Excited to learn from you all. Thanks. Thanks, Shannon. Sorry about that. Debbie, up to you. Hello, everyone. Nice to see some familiar faces.
I'm Debbie Shackleford. I'm with Apprenticeship Colorado, and I'm the youth engagement specialist. I am glad that Lee and and Carl, invited us to be a part of this. As we all know, registered apprenticeship and college are not either or. And I think, what our apprentices are learning and achieving, should be a part of the transfer conversation. There are challenges, that I see as far as some of the registered, apprenticeship RTI is, noncredit. However,
I don't think that that should be avoided in the transfer conversation. I think, PLA should be, very important in those areas. From my 90,000 view foot view of information and a centralized information, I think it's very important for intentionality of understanding, of what what credits are transferable, and at every level of the landscape. So our counselors in the high schools, I think it's extremely important that there's a solid understanding so that speak can be
given to the student. It can be intentional as far as what their goals are when they're heading into college, you know, a two year or or a community college. And also then intentional conversations, with the college advisers to make sure that they are taking the right courses and understanding that if they're going to a four year, this is what will transfer at this time and this will not. I've heard a couple of mentioned, individuals mentioned that, you know, that in fact has been not the case.
And so I think intentionality of understanding, and I know that all the advisors across the landscape have a lot on their plates. But I think and especially some of our, youth and individuals with barriers, they get lost in the shuffle. They don't know who to go to or they, like someone mentioned, they just don't show up, I think Landon mentioned. And so we're miss they're missing out. Glad to be a part of this group, and I look forward to learning a lot from all of you. Fantastic. Thank you very much, Debbie.
And I know, you know, we use a lot of time for introductions and to get those perspectives. I thought it was important with so many folks that don't always work together to hear what everybody's experiencing from whether it's high school, CDE, outside organizations, or certainly our our, higher ed institutions, what people are experiencing. We we probably don't have time today to do intros of the whole staff. But if you wanna mention who is, and then maybe you can take us right in to a conversation of what did we see in the audit that we need as a group to tackle, really in the coming couple of months.
Sure. And and thank you very much, Terry Abramson, and and thank you everyone for agreeing to be part of this really important transfer subcommittee. My name is Carl Einhaus, and I'm the chief student success and academic affairs officer here at the Department of Higher Education. I've been here for eleven years and this role for just over a year and I'm joined with by Brad Griffith who is our senior director of academic pathways and innovation and we also have Christina Carrillo here, who I know a lot of you know as well.
And and Christina wears a lot of hats, but she works a lot with the general education council and is also our student advocate. And, that us three along with Liliana Diaz, work really hard at making sure that transfer works here, to the best of our fidelity and resources that we have here in the department. And so, we're gonna be assisting, chair Abramson along, with this work. And we know that a lot of this work will be coming out of the great ideas that and expertise that you all will have, but also in part it will include some of the recommendations that came from a
statewide audit. And I'm not gonna go into the details. We're we'll get into the details, later on, when we are, meeting, in the future. But some just general overview information about that audit. A couple of years ago, a legislator said, hey. I wanna find out if statewide transfer is working here in Colorado. Specifically, how is it working for, the guaranteed transfer pathway courses? How is it working for those statewide transfer agreements? And also for students who are from the military, are those courses actually transferring in as designed? And so the the audit occurred this past year,
and based upon that audit, 19 recommendations were developed in terms of how to improve transfer here in Colorado. There's a lot of things that they saw that were working, but they also saw that there's a lot of room for improvement. And a lot of those areas for improvement, you all have already mentioned. And so what we'll be doing is looking to see what we can do to change policy, update policy to, really help increase, the transparency of transfer and the effectiveness of transfer and,
really concentrating on the different, recommendations that were provided to us. So these recommendations and and I will, already in the agenda, there's a link to all the overall recommendations so you can take a look at those if you haven't already. I'll I'll I'll also gonna send you a PowerPoint, which really condenses it down a lot more so you can have a just kind of a brief overview of what those recommendations are but some of them revolve around clarifying policy for example if a student has credit for prior learning let's say AP
Right now the the current practice is that the receiving institution let's say Arapahoe Community College would require the official score from College Board with with the exam score and all that information and so what they're recommending because there's a lot of students who did not submit their official test scores on lost credit as a result what they're recommending is is that if we find a unified way of recording that on a on a college transcript within the state that the receiving institution accept that score.
So that's just one of many different recommendations. Like I said, I'm not gonna get into a lot of them, but a lot of it will be, surrounding clarifying policy on transfer to make it a a lot more easy for people to digest. And, and if with that, Barrick, if I can pass it on to Brad. Please do. And Brad's gonna go over a policy review process since we mentioned that we're looking at updating policy. Brad has been involved in work within our department that is aimed at making, updating policy a lot more efficient process. So take it away,
Brad. Thanks a lot, Carl. And, we will be sharing a document that actually includes the full details of this proposal, which I'll provide an overview of here in just a few short minutes for you all today. But the Commission on Higher Education is about to embark on a comprehensive policy review cycle, which we anticipate will take probably about, if not, over eighteen months to complete from start to finish and include extensive opportunities for stakeholder engagement and feedback as we open up every single policy that sits under the commission's
purview. With the notification to the commission that we intend to do this policy, we have also been able to get approval from our commissioner chair, Jen Wallmer, to offer the opportunity to the transfer subcommittee to pilot this proposal process here, which, again, I'll provide just a brief overview for you all today, with further details covered in that document to come. Essentially, we will have to start doing some preparation work of actually getting all of the policies under CCHE in a format that can be reviewed and edited, and made available to public audiences. So there will be a new web page that stood up on the c d
CDHE website with dashboards that actually contain public information about the policies that are under review and how our public audiences as well as various advisory groups, including this subcommittee, can actually contribute their feedback and suggestions on those potential revisions. Policies will also come to you all first with some potential staff suggestions for revisions, looking, for example, at the transfer audit recommendations that Carl highlighted earlier. There are some recommendations in there that are fairly cut and dry that we will easily be able to make a recommendation for you all in advance.
But others might have more of a strategic focus out there, and, certainly, we will appreciate the the ability to rely on this group to be able to serve as that think tank for us. So with the revision of policies that's going to have to occur with the OSA transfer audit, we would actually engage with this group in spring of opening up these policies for review. Again, coming to this group with initial staff draft revisions, you all having the first chance opportunity to perhaps provide those recommendations or highlight areas for revisions within the policies. And then we would intend to also send these potential revisions to the CEOs of
the higher education institutions for final comments. And then whenever these would actually be finalized and kind of reach that point of consensus, they would be funneled through the student success and workforce alignment standing committee and then to the full commission for potential consideration of approval at the business meeting there. So, again, just quick highlights here being multiple opportunities for open commenting and feedback periods, a certain pathway that we will follow to make sure that clear and easy revisions are taken care of before you all have that chance or, you know, maybe ask to look at policies to revise and then dedicated specific periods where we
will leave them open for commenting before they're actually closed for revisions and then move forward to the commission for that potential consideration of approval there. So, as Carl mentioned, I'll be serving as one of the lead points of contacts for the academic affairs area, which is where most of all our policies under consideration will sit. So please reach out if you have any questions, and we certainly welcome any initial recommendations that you all might have because this is considered a pilot of this policy revision process with you all in the transfer subcommittee. We will make some initial revisions to the process based upon your feedback and carry
those forward as we open up other policies under the commission's purview. So, again, that document's coming to you all after the meeting here today, and thank you very much for the opportunity to share. Thank you, Brad. And and Terry, I'm sorry. I neglected to introduce Doctor. Armendariz as well who's part of this, a part of our team. And Doctor. Armendariz, some of you might know, leads COSI, but also recently has become the deputy chief of student success and academic affairs here in our department. So I just wanted to recognize the fact that she will also be involved with this work.
Thank you, Carl. And and with that, that really covers most of our formal business. Other than clarifying what it is you all got roped into. I think we've kind of painted some of the the broad strokes. My intention is we spend these first couple of months really on a deep dive on some of these required elements. I'm hoping you'll stick around with us for the first half of next year to get into a lot of the things you are referencing. Carl, do you wanna talk a little bit or offer your initial thinking on scheduling and what we're asking you folks, particularly in January and February,
to meet some timelines we have at the department? Absolutely. So we can you could do this a couple different ways. We could definitely do a dudepol. Also, if this time works, this day and time works for the majority of you, I think what we can do is, go ahead and keep this time at 2PM on Wednesdays, and, and and what we'll want to do, I think as Terry mentioned is, we'll schedule two dates in January, two dates in February, and then monthly after that. And then, if, if we determine that Wednesday is a 2PM work, then great, but I think maybe what we should do is just do a Doodle poll to
see if we can find the time because we also know there's a couple of folk who are not able to make this meeting today because of other commitments. So, we'll go ahead and do the doodle, and, we'll figure out a time, and we'll make sure that, we'll send out the invite once we have, of the vote in. Thank you, Carl. Any members have questions? I I know this is kind of a get to know in a level set. But does anybody have questions about what we're hoping to tackle or or wanna offer thoughts for, Carl and and Brad and and the CDHE team and I to just consider. Alright. Well, in one of the rare times I'm gonna say this,
we're gonna wrap a little bit early. I don't wanna set the expectation that's always gonna happen. We'll get that doodle poll out to all of you. I am grateful for all of you giving your time to this conversation, and for the work that you're doing on this every day anyway. So really appreciate you. We'll get that doodle poll out, and we'll look forward to getting back together with you, here in the coming weeks. But thank you all very much for committing to this. Bye. You guys have a great day. Happy holidays.