Welcome back to Houston newsmakers where I’m joined by dr. Lauren Blanchard
president of the University of Houston, downtown and dr. Laurel Williamson
she is the
Deputy Chancellor in College president at San Jacinto College.
Good morning to both of you. Good morning.
We’re here to talk about something that is really interesting is called a Houston
guided Pathways to success program,
we’re going to be calling it Houston GPS which is what everybody calls it.
Dr.
Blanchard what is Houston GPS and why is there a need for it?
Houston.
GPS is a Consortium of
13 community colleges and universities four-year
universities in the
greater
City of Houston
that’s designed to really combat three. Big issues
as it relates to students who transfer
from a community college into a four-year University
within the Houston region
one is timely degree completion. Second is cost,
and
three is actual degree completion. And what I mean by that is
that
where the problem has been
in place for certainly more than 10 years now
now
where we see students who go into
either acquire, a
an associate’s degree
and our baccalaureate degree, many that they are transferring over to get their
baccalaureate degree
and it’s taking them so much time in order to get that
degree completed.
Now some of it is based on the fact that these students many
of them are adult Learners
and so they’ve got life issues as well as family issues to take
care of
but others really do want to complete those degrees in a timely
manner
and that
Becomes the burden of the responsibilities of the campuses
to understand
what’s standing in their way, what are the barriers? So,
dr. Williams said I know the San Jacinto College is one of seven
the community colleges in this Consortium.
And I know the goal. We talked about
not only getting a college degree but to help them graduate on time.
It sounds like this is very much like the old
high school guidance. Counselor whose job it was to do
that except on an elevated level for adults who really
need to get that guidance. Absolutely. And to do it.
It
immediately when the student enters the
you know Community College or in dual credit if they are in the
Dual credit pathway
is to immediately
work with the student to Define that pathway to delineate
it so that you can speed that time to degree.
There’s no excess coursework.
There’s no excess financial burden.
Our goal is that
the students who transfer arrives at the University of Houston
with
the appropriate courses,
With no loss of credit with their financial aid, still available
to the
to them. So they didn’t use it all up at the community college and
that they are a junior status in their program of choice. So
you know
what? You talked about it. Really, there’s efforts that have
been done and there’s research that shows that there’s waste in the system
we’re doing. Talk about a couple of the efforts are designed to eliminate
according to the organization of Texas 2036. There’s some
real dollars and cents
reasons to change trying to change its trajectory of thousands of students.
I’ve
got a full screen graphic here.
Telling you about this, the 200,000 community college. Students
graduating with an excess of 20 to credit hours,
that’s money, wasted
that 17,000 community college students, fail to transfer
70,000
credit hours, that’s waste of time and money
and that when students do graduate, they do so with an average of ten
unneeded hours
that’s time and money wasted as well. So this whole program,
dr. Williamson is really focused on making sure
when you get to that point of graduation, they can do it really
efficiently. Yes. Exactly.
Oddly again
that they’re not burdened with student debt
that they have used our
their financial aid strategically
and not exhausted at that. Was one of the things that we had conversations
about was because I think that
internally people did not realize
that federal financial aid is finite. It’s not just
forever. How long you want to go to college? So we want students to
still be able to attend the University of Houston
and complete dr. Blanchard you chair? The governing Council. This
created to manage this process
Us
how deep a dive is? That plan designed to take
and what are some of the logistics involved and getting the people in
place to provide that needed guidance?
So it really is creating the opportunity for there to be the
right Synergy between the community colleges and
the houston-based universities.
So that students will feel that when they are transitioning over to
the four-year degree program,
that they’re not strangers to us. That we’ve known them all along
because we’ve been sharing data,
we know exactly what
Your needs are in terms of
academic
success needs
as well as basic needs. You know, we have many of our students
who come to us
needing
having basic insecurities and with food needing Mental
Health Services
and that won’t be new to us and isn’t new to us at the
four-year level because
we have been communicating with our advisors and counterparts
at the community. Colleges
so that when they come to us, we’ve got the pathway already clear. We’re
going to talk more on this Houston GPS program after the break.