Setting the pace for new opportunities

We recently built on our commitment to increase opportunities for students to pursue a Bloomsburg University degree through a partnership with Lehigh Carbon Community College that will serve as a model for other PASSHE universities.

Donald Snyder, Lehigh Carbon’s president, and I formalized a program-to-program articulation agreement for students who earn an associate’s degree in early childhood and elementary education to seamlessly transition into our bachelor’s of education program, either at our Bloomsburg campus or at Lehigh Carbon’s Morgan Center in Tamaqua. This allows students to pursue their higher education goals closer to home while receiving a high-quality BU education.

More opportunities are to come as BU will sign similar agreements later this month with Luzerne County Community College and Northampton Community College. At LCCC, similar to the Lehigh Carbon agreement, students will be able to complete the four-year degree at the campus in Nanticoke without traveling to our campus.

These program-to-program articulations are the first of their kind and another example of BU’s leadership in teacher preparation and curriculum innovation. Our outstanding faculty in the College of Education worked creatively and collaboratively with their community college colleagues in developing the curriculum that led to the articulation agreements.

This model should lead to program-to-program articulations in other majors at BU, providing additional seamless pathways for community college students to complete bachelor’s degrees in high-demand fields. In addition, the pathways will increase the number of well-prepared transfer students as we enter a decade in which the number of high school graduates is expected to decline.