Growing access: Expanding engineering pathways through Colorado’s community colleges
Prospective transfer students tour the Integrated Teaching and Learning Laboratory at CU Engineering.
This year, CU Engineering welcomed the largest number of transfer students from Colorado community colleges ever. In total, 562 students joined our engineering degree programs via transfer this academic year.
This is no accident. Dean Bobby Braun is committed to building relationships with each and every community college in our state. He started that process with last fall’s inaugural Engineering State Tour.
His goal is to create well-lit paths for community college students to come to CU Boulder’s College of Engineering and Applied Science. And that’s what our recently developed transfer pathways do. These guides allow students to complete classes at Colorado community colleges and transfer them directly to a CU Engineering degree. These streamlined and integrated pathways ensure students that their community college courses will apply directly to their CU Engineering major of choice.
We've also created 2 + 2 pathways for several degree programs at the Boulder County campus of Front Range Community College, the Steamboat Springs campus of Colorado Mountain College, and the Community College of Aurora (with more of these programs to come). These integrated plans provide students the opportunity to affordably complete their first two years at a community college and then transfer to CU Boulder to complete their degree – finishing an engineering bachelor’s degree in four years.
Dean Bobby Braun speaks to students at Pueblo Community College during the 2017 Engineering State Tour.
These new pathways augment the Engineering Partnership Program between CU Engineering and Colorado Mesa University, which allows students to earn a CU Engineering degree in mechanical or civil engineering while living and learning on the Western Slope. Last week, CMU President Tim Foster and Dean Braun announced that this partnership will include a degree in this fall.
These new transfer pathways and the growing partnership between CU Engineering and are all part of Dean Braun’s strategy to expand access to engineering education across the state of Colorado.
If you are a prospective transfer student, don’t forget that the early notification application deadline for Fall 2018 admission is March 1. CU Engineering offers guaranteed admission and scholarships to qualified transfer students from Colorado community colleges. We’re working to create more scholarships for community college transfer students and first-generation students to make a CU Engineering the premier destination for all engineering students in the state of Colorado.
We want your help! To get involved, contact me here: cjanderson@colorado.edu. We’d love to help you light the path for our state’s next generation of engineers.
Chris Anderson is Director of Transfer Student Pathways at the College of Engineering and Applied Science at CU Boulder.