Attending Cerritos College for the past three years, pyschology marjor, Karina Cahuantz looks forward to the advantages that senate bill 1440 will have as she is beginning to get ready to transfer to a Ca-State university.

“I think it will actually help me get a guarenteed spot in the university I want to go, so its kind of like an advantage.” Cahuantz said about her outlook of how the bill will affect students.

UCLA peer-mentor, and Cerritos College graduate, Mario Salcedo talked about the possibilites of senate bill 1440 creating new revenues by allowing the ease to open more doors for community college students to transfer to Cal-State Universities

“Instead of a students backing away from an education, they might go to a school they wouldn’t have origanlly preferred, but when offered the incentive (to go to another university), that’s one more student in higher education.” Salcedo commented on the affects that the bill could have on students who want to transfer.

Since the senate bill just recently passed, state-wide community colleges have to agree on implementing their transfer degree curriculum by following the criteria of the bill. There are currently six majors listed as transfer models for community colleges to review and give feedback on the first draft of degrees.  

Cerritos College Faculty Senate President, Debra Moore, is advising faculty members to evaluate the available transfer degree models and respond before the end of the year to get approval for Associate degrees that successfully transfer students.

“We need to review our different transfer degrees or create transfer degrees that fit this model. It has to have those outlines that are within the bill.” Moore said.

California community colleges have the option to analyze the curriculum of the transfer degree models and return comments with any propoals until the beginning of December.

By gathering the suggestions from colleges in different regions, Faculty Discipline Review Groups, a team of disciplined faculty members of community colleges and CSU’s, process the finalized version of the transfer descriptors and post the final models on website, www.c-id.net.

The bill has given promise to students the option to transfer to a CSU of their choice without the concern for them to repeat or complete lower-division classes again once they transfer.

Although the bill is meant to impact the student’s ability to transfer, Santa Rosa Junior College, transfer counselor, Roberta L Delgado, was reluctant to speak about the issue due to uncertainty of how the bill will be applied towards students.

“I am not really able to speak to this issue, yet. The CSU and CCC systems are in the process of determining how this bill be implemented. Until that happens- the goal is the spring of 2011.” Delgado said.

Given short time to develop their curriculum of Associate transfer degrees, community colleges have to adopt courses that are accepted along guidelines, which are supposed to meet with the requirements of CSU’s by Fall of 2011.

The timeline to get transfer degrees approved by the bill is a main concern that Cerritos College Vice President of Academic Affairs Bill Farmer is aware of.

“It’s a lot of work to do in a year because our timelines for catalog publication are earlier than fall of 2011, and I’m not sure if the legislator understood that when they set the deadline. So we have to rush to get at least two degrees approved by fall 2011.” Farmer said.

Each individual college has to undergo two approved transfer degrees from their curriculum committee, who then sets out the degrees to the Chancellor’s office to become legitimate and ready for students to accomplish in the time for transferring.

Community colleges in California are in the working process of agreeing on the same  curriculum that best fits the available majors. But for some regional counties, it still restricts students from transferring to their preferred university.

 The San Diego region won’t be able to increase the ability for students to transfer to San Diego University that most apply to. As 6,000 apply to the school, only 3,000 are accepted.

“San Diego University is constrained by the capacity, but students still have other options to go to other private and local universities. ” Lynn Ceresino Neault said referring to expectations of the senate bill creating new streamline transfer degrees

By further looking into the depths of how the transfer models will affect Cerritos College, faculty departments are working on their transfer curriculum to pace up the approval for transfer degrees that will hopefully have students transferring to Cal-State withiin the next two years.

However, it is still unclear on what specific Ca-States are available tl allow community college students to transfer, it will still take a year to see what transfer degrees will actually be approved under the bill for Cerritos College.