HELLO AGAIN AND HOLIDAY GREETINGS

It has now been four months since the Center officially opened, and we have made a lot of progress; I hope you have seen a difference in the service we are able to offer to the campus community. You may have noticed that the story in The Commuter Connection did not make it easy for students to find us; that is because we expect most questions will come from advisors on behalf of their students. We can respond most quickly to your inquiries when advisors either phone or email our office. Advisors should be ready to give the Center the student's name and social security number when asking a question concerning transfer credit. Of course, we will always try to take care of students in distress, but we prefer that advisors contact us rather than students. Since the Center has a relatively small staff, it is quickly overwhelmed when it personally advises all students. Moreover, the task of advising would detract from our goal of improving our database of transfer credits.

Theresa DiPaolo
Transfer Credit Coordinator

ENGLISH 101

Advisors may occasionally be surprised to note that courses titled "English Composition" or "Fundamentals of Writing" or "Basic Expository Writing" are articulated as "lower-level elective" or even "does not transfer"; sometimes these transfer course ID numbers will give you a clue as to why (numbers less than 100, e.g.), but sometimes remedial courses are actually numbered higher than the courses they are meant to precede. Other times, the course has been determined to lack a key component of Freshman Writing, such as argumentation, word processing use, library/database research or document citation. Sometimes the sequencing of courses is apparent only after a review of several catalog columns, even of courses in other departments. Of course, it is possible that the evaluation has been made in error or with incomplete information (course descriptions change, some omit vital data for space considerations, etc.). Please call our attention to any peculiar equivalencies or other anomalies.

AROUND THE WORLD

Students who earned credit at overseas institutions will continue to have their work evaluated by the International Education Services Office for the foreseeable future. However, the Center is working with Valerie Woolston, Barbara Varsa, and the CORE committee - first to identify major feeder schools and educational systems which can be accommodated by our database, and then to code general education courses.

DID YOU KNOW...

The Transfer Credit Center has

Over 50,000 equivalencies in its database? This is a 30% increase since August.
Information for 1,273 schools? This is a 15% increase since August.
80% of Spring 1995 incoming courses evaluated?

IT'S HISTORY, FOLKS

Students occasionally transfer in course work from 10, 15, 20 or more years ago. In some cases the evaluation of their courses, while demanding considerable time and effort, is still lacking in sophistication and accuracy. While we will make every effort to assign reasonable transfer credit based on course title, number, departmental consultation, other information available, and common sense, for the present the Transfer Credit Center will concentrate on building its database of current transferrable courses and eliminating errors in posting and credit assignment. We will also request syllabi and course descriptions from other institutions to facilitate departmental evaluation; naturally the turnaround time on such requests may not be as short as that on courses taken recently.

DEPARTMENTAL EVALUATIONS

Thanks for your cooperation. A favor: in the future, when we send course descriptions with highlighted courses, if possible, evaluate not only the highlighted course - one that a student or advisor has requested - but others nearby or in the same sequence. It will be a great help to us, and maybe to the student who has just had his/her latest transcript sent in with the next course on it. We will even save paper and fiche fluid!

NEW TRANSFER CREDIT EQUIVALENCY SCREEN

Advisors who use SIS may now access a new screen (presently in development - send comments via email) by using the "Go TCEQ" command. To find out how to use the screen, press "F1" to get help. If you still have difficulty operating the screen, call the Center and we will provide a "cheat sheet" or walk you through the process

The TCEQ screen has a variety of features you will find helpful. First, the screen displays the course of the sending institution and its equivalent course at the University of Maryland at College Park. Next, the screen shows whether the courses satisfy USP, CORE, or Diversity requirements. If the course does not have a direct UMCP equivalent, then the "ELEC" (short for elective) column may display whether the course is a lower or upper level (L1 or L2) course. This column also indicates whether a course with no exact equivalency satisfies the fundamental Math (FM) or English (FE) requirement. Use "F5" to expand the screen to see additional information about any course.

New Feature: The TCEQ screen allows advisors to search for institutions in a particular state by using the state's Zip ID and a questions mark (e.g., "MD?," "CT?", etc.).

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