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Introduction
Background
The Intersegmental Major Preparation Articulated Curriculum
(IMPAC) project originated in the Intersegmental Committee
of Statewide Academic Senates (ICAS) of the California Community
College (CCC), University of California (UC), and California
State University (CSU) systems. IMPAC is a unique faculty-designed,
faculty-run project designed to assist the student transfer
process from the community colleges to the UC and CSU systems
for the baccalaureate degree. In June 2000, the Chancellor
of the California Community College system awarded the first
of five $550,000 annual grants to fund the work of IMPAC.
Goals and Purposes
of the Project
IMPAC is expected to continue as long as articulation is
needed among the higher education systems. The goal of IMPAC
is for faculty in the disciplines, through regional and statewide
meetings, to come to a common understanding of lower-division,
major preparation that serve as prerequisites to upper-division
work at UC and CSU campuses. Faculty review, revise and update
prerequisite and lower-division course requirements for the
major and seek to define the content areas, competencies,
skills, and experiences transferring students must have to
compete successfully at the upper division level. Resultant
course descriptions will serve as the basis for articulation
among UC, CSU, CCC and other institutions so that students
may smoothly transfer in a manner that assures both full preparation
and complete credit for courses completed. The goals of the
IMPAC project include:
- Reaching intersegmental consensus on the required elements
to be included in the lower division preparation for the
major;
- Working with other intersegmental transfer efforts: the
California Articulation Numbering (CAN) project, Articulation
System Stimulating Inter-institutional Student Transfer
(ASSIST), Intersegmental General Education Transfer Curriculum
(IGETC), GE-Breadth/IGETC, the CSU Regional Core Alignment
Project, and the community college organizations of counselors,
articulation officers, and transfer center coordinators;
- Increasing transferability of students between system
campuses and between the three higher education systems,
and
- Decreasing the time to degree for students.
IMPAC also seeks to increase intersegmental faculty collaboration,
strengthen the alignment of curriculum and the rigor of its
delivery, build trust among faculty of the three segments,
and better serve students whose education is a shared mission
of both the sending and receiving institutions.
As a result of IMPAC, ICAS hopes to improve student transfer
through increased awareness and involvement of faculty and
ensure that all students are well prepared for upper-division
work. Students should be able to avoid unnecessary course
work prior to transfer, assure that all required courses are
taken before transfer, and not have to repeat courses taken
successfully at the community college in preparation for the
major.
Process
The IMPAC project over the next five years will create an
effective infrastructure within and between academic disciplines.
IMPAC has grouped the range of available transfer majors into
five broad areas or "clusters" of disciplines. These
five discipline areas are listed below. Each year additional
disciplines will be added until all disciplines are included.
These grouped clusters of disciplines generally reflect the
overlap of prerequisites for a given major. Thus, in Science
Cluster I, students majoring in physics commonly will need
pre-transfer work in mathematics to be eligible for the major.
Biology majors need mathematics, as well as some chemistry
and physics, to be successful as biology majors. Majors in
Applied Sciences (Cluster 2) build upon the core courses of
Cluster 2. Thus, the interdisciplinary discussions cross clusters
as well as disciplines.
2000 Sciences
(Cluster 1):
biology, chemistry, physics, and mathematics.
2001 Applied
Sciences (Cluster 2):
agriculture, computer science, earth sciences, food science/nutrition,
and nursing.
2002 Business
and Government (Cluster 3):
computer information systems, criminal justice, business,
economics, and political science. In addition, the Steering
Committee has determined that the engineering and geography
disciplines should commence discussions in year 2002.
2003 Social &
Behavioral (Cluster 4):
anthropology, geography, history, psychology (including human
development), and sociology.
2004 Language
(Cluster 4):
English, ESL, foreign languages, communications/speech, and
journalism.
2005 Arts &
Humanities (Cluster 5):
art/fashion/interior design, theater arts, humanities, music,
and philosophy.
To be considered prior to 2005,
pending completion of CSU's internal review: teacher preparation/liberal
studies.
In our pilot year, project participants came to understand
that, to capture the full range of coursework needed for successful
transfer, it is essential that we facilitate both discipline
and cross discipline faculty dialogues. In fact, we have found
that such interdisciplinary discussions can have immediate
and lasting effect when faculty come to understand the reality
and impact of given requirements on student transfer chances.
For example, upon discussion and reflection, faculty from
biology and mathematics concluded that the historical practice
of requiring calculus-based physics for biology transfers
is more tradition than necessity. The conversations between
physics and biology can lead to a more flexible articulation
of the algebra-based physics as appropriate for bioscience
transfers. This outcome will be of immediate benefit to students,
particularly those who want to transfer from smaller or more
rural community colleges unable to offer such advanced courses
on a regular basis.
For 2000-2001, ICAS, through its Steering Committee, identified
lead faculty in each of the nine disciplines in the Science
Cluster. Work began by these lead faculty on developing matrices
showing major-preparation requirements at each UC and CSU
and summarizing the courses offered in a given major at every
community college. After review by the Steering Committee,
these major prep matrices served
as the basis for preparing tables of course descriptions using information from on-line
catalogs. Work then began on determining the extent of articulation
of major prep courses. Matrices for each UC and CSU for each
major was constructed to show numbers for courses already
articulated from each community college. Information from
the state repository for articulation agreements, Articulation
System Stimulating Interinstitutional Student Transfer (ASSIST),
was used to create these articulation matrices. Tables of course descriptions and
the articulation matrices were put together by the staff of
the Academic Senate for the California Community Colleges.
The next step in this process was to hold regional meetings
(see Appendix A dates, locations, and attendees). Lead Faculty
members representing UC, CSU, and CCC facilitated these four
regional meetings. Private colleges and universities were
invited to attend as well. Articulation officers, as well
as representatives from the CAN System and ASSIST, were present
as resources. Also attending were observers from ICAS, from
the three system offices, and graduate students at two universities
who studied our project. Like the statewide meetings, regional
meetings scheduled time for both disciplinary and interdisciplinary
discussions. The discipline faculty began their discussion
with an evaluation of the IMPAC matrices and descriptions
and to review the status of their existing articulation, identifying
potential new agreements that might be fostered. It is anticipated
that these discipline-based faculty discussions will lead
to increased curriculum alignment across all the segments.
The interdisciplinary discussions that follow later in the
day remain essential in building cohesive and coherent programs
in the major and in easing what are perceived by students
and segments alike as barriers to effective transfer. From
these interdisciplinary discussions have come significant
recommendations and new understandings among disciplines and
their faculty. As faculty from the applied sciences joined
the discussions this year, they posed additional salient questions
and requested instructional innovation from their science
and mathematics colleagues; nursing faculty, for example,
requested a revised curriculum in chemistry and biology for
their nursing students who struggle under high-unit demands,
imposed by external agencies.
Regional meetings are also designed to seek and secure several
agreements among departments in the region. Commitments are
sought from faculty at four-year institutions to notify community
college faculty of impending curriculum changes and to collaborate
on those changes to the extent feasible. When major preparation
requirements are changed, receiving departments will be asked
to establish a one-year period during which community college
students will be accepted under previous requirements. Community
college faculty will in turn be expected to invite a representative
from a four-year department to participate in the program
review now required under the six-year accreditation cycle.
After each regional meeting is concluded, the Lead Discipline
Faculty member prepared a report summarizing statements of
the competencies and preparation expected of students entering
upper-division work in the major. These reports are posted
on the IMPAC website and widely circulated for comment by
the field. Steering Committee members presented material and
commentary for review to ICAS. ICAS then further disseminated
those reports containing the core competencies and preparation
for each discipline as determined thus far to affected faculty
of UC, CSU and CCC, using Web site resources, professional
organizations, and internal structures for distribution.
These feedback loops, as well as the alternating regional
and state meetings, are extremely important steps in generating
sufficient dialogue and building consensus among discipline
faculty. The perceived legitimacy of the products is critical
in securing widespread "buy in" by faculty across
all the institutions.
Thus, over a five-year period, the essential understanding
of pre-transfer, lower division, major preparation for each
undergraduate major will have been forged by faculty across
the segments. These understandings will be concretized in
matrices and agreements. An infrastructure of discipline committees,
agreements, and contacts will have been established. And the
machinery will have been institutionalized for the absolutely
essential ongoing review and cyclic renewal of those agreements.
By linking these reviews to the ongoing work of articulation
officers, using CAN to formalize these course descriptions,
and publishing and maintaining the articulation agreements
in the ASSIST database, these dynamic agreements about undergraduate
major preparation will constitute a considerable advance for
students negotiating transfer among the segments of higher
education in California.
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