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The Transfer Credit Center |
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| Transfer Times, Dateline: August 1997 |
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August 1997 Supplemental Summer Edition In this issue:
TCC ON THE MOVE The Transfer Credit Center has relocated to Room 1130 in the Mitchell Building. The Registrar's Office reorganized into two teams, Customer Service and Information Technology. The Transfer Credit Center is part of Information Technology and hence moved to the new location. Room 1101 is now a one-stop location for student services, including registration activities, record maintenance, and transcript requests. The Educational Testing Service is offering a new Advanced Placement test for Statistics starting in May 1997. This test does not appear in the current catalog. Scores of 3, 4, or 5 will be awarded 3 credits, equivalent to STAT 100 (which fulfills fundamental math as well as a CORE MS requirement). The test is programmed in our transfer database, and students reporting scores this summer should have the equivalency on their record. BEFORE YOU SIGN THAT PERMISSION TO ENROLL FORM ... (a quick checklist) Before signing Permission to Enroll Forms, it is important to check TCEQ for courses deemed "No advance permission" (footnote 17). The respective department (often MATH) has evaluated these courses for incoming transfer students; current UM students should not receive credit. Transfer applicability for such courses defaults to "X" rather than "Y" or "N" on the TC screen in SIS for UM students of record. If an exception was made, contact the Center and we will adjust the student's record to reflect credit for the course. Of course, such instances should constitute the exception and not the rule. Starting and ending dates for transfer equivalencies are important to note as well. The "Start Trm" and "End Trm" far-right columns in TCEQ indicate effective dates for some transfer course equivalencies. In these cases, the equivalency is valid only for the dates indicated. Direct any questions about reading TCEQ to tccinfo@deans (or call us). Please forward copies of Permission to Enroll forms containing transfer equivalencies not currently in TCEQ. This will ensure the student's record will accurately reflect the correct equivalency as soon as the transcript is entered into his/her record. It also reduces duplication of effort as courses already appearing in TCEQ do not need to be evaluated twice. NEW PRELIMINARY TRANSFER CREDIT LETTERS The Transfer Credit Center, with assistance from Academic Data Systems, has redesigned the letter accompanying preliminary transfer credit equivalencies. There are now two letters, one geared for transfer students and one for freshmen with AP or IB credit. The letters provide information about transfer credit applicability and details about the preliminary evaluation (including CORE codes, missing equivalencies, and transfer course look-up on the World Wide Web). Tailored information about the transfer credit process will answer many students' questions and reduce the number of inquiries. The Center will be working with IES in the future to produce a standard letter for international students as well. We extend our sincere thanks to Jacob Lee and Chenia Carmel for their effort on this project. ELECTRONIC DEGREE AUDITOR UPDATE Our last issue announced the pilot launch of the Electronic Degree Auditor. When fully deployed, this program will allow advisors and students efficiently and quickly to run academic audits, thus enabling them to monitor academic progress towards any degree and to perform graduation clearances. The auditor will incorporate all evaluated transfer credit and keep track of adjustments made to students' records by College offices. To date, the major requirements for over half of the Colleges have been programmed, using catalog information and departmental curriculum sheets. These preliminary programs are available for testing at https://www.diva.umd.edu/ on DIVA, the Distributed Interactive Visual Advisor system. The "s" after "http" in the URL address signifies that DIVA is on a secured server to protect the confidentiality of students' records. Contact the HelpLine to request an account and password to log onto DIVA (hotline@deans or X51778). Each user's College Authorizer must approve access to the system. Major requirements for the remaining Colleges are currently in development. We hope to have nearly all majors available on DIVA for testing by early October. The best way to obtain the latest information about the Degree Auditor is through the DAUG (now Degree Auditor Users Group) meetings on the first Tuesday of every month. For the summer, however, DAUG meetings are scheduled with individual Colleges as their majors are added to DIVA. This new format is designed to gain input from users as they move through different stages of auditor use and, as far as possible, to tailor enhancements to the needs of each College. If you have questions, contact auditfolks@deans. Your involvement and input are important to the audit system's development. We welcome your comments and suggestions. COURSE EVALUATORS ... As we move toward the electronic audit system, it is increasingly important that students' records in SIS accurately reflect transfer course equivalencies. This, in turn, makes it imperative that we receive information regarding course articulations. Even if the evaluation only applies to a particular student, we need to modify that student's transfer record accordingly. Although the contract mechanism, a future component of the audit system, will allow advisors to make exceptions for individual students, it will not allow them to modify transfer course equivalencies in the TCC database. The footnotes found in TCEQ have been updated. Defunct codes were deleted, categories were condensed to reduce redundancy, and two new footnote codes were added.
Transfer Credit Footnotes A NOTE OF THANKS The Center wants to thank sincerely Dr. Linda Coleman and her Freshman Writing staff for their willingness to evaluate countless courses from schools all over the United States and beyond. As mentioned in the previous article, Dr. Coleman suggested the portfolio review (PF) footnote for courses with some variable content or for which reliable and complete descriptions are not available. Students should contact the Freshman Writing office at (301) 405-3771 to make an appointment and to discuss materials needed for the review (such as writing samples, syllabus, and supplemental information about the course). Coordinators have walk-in hours during the academic year from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Please encourage students to complete their course reviews before upcoming early registration. TRANSFER COURSE APPLICABILITY SCREEN (TRANAPP) The Transfer Course Applicability processor, a new SIS screen, made its debut this summer. To view this screen, type "go tranapp" at the command line. The applicability screen allows the advising college office to modify students' transfer records. For instance, when a student transfers more than 60 community college credits (or 90 credits from a four-year institution), advisors can tag the "extra" courses as not applicable. In addition, advisors can make exceptions for transfer courses taken within the last 30 credits of graduation. The number of credits that are accepted and applicable are shown for each institution a student previously attended. It is important to make the distinction between accepted and applicable credits. Accepted credits are transferable to the University; applicable credits count toward major and degree requirements. Only those courses that are acceptable for transfer credit will appear in the transfer applicability screen. Courses that did not transfer due to low grades or departmental evaluations are not listed. The new screen is important to the Electronic Degree Auditor. The audit system will read applicabilities set in the TRANAPP screen and apply modifications and exceptions toward students' major requirements. The TRANAPP screen is still in its infancy and is certain to change and evolve over time. If you have any suggestions for future capabilities or comments about the screen, please let us know.
Mitchell Building, University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742
Theresa DiPaolo phone: (301) 314-8413; fax: (301) 314-9693; email: tdipaolo@deans.umd.edu |
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Copyright © 2008 The Universities of Maryland, College Park, MD, U.S.A. Last Modified Thu Jan 11, 2001 16:01:03 |