LSU’s flagship campus executed the first of several articulation agreements with LSU System satellite campuses Oct. 1 that would allow students enrolled in LSU’s Continuing Education program to seamlessly transfer into one of LSU Alexandria’s online degree programs, according to a news release from LSU Media Relations.
The memorandum of understanding will serve as a stepping stone for other agreements with LSU Eunice and LSU Shreveport to “create greater educational opportunities for Louisiana citizens and better meet the workforce needs of our state,” according to the release.
The Continuing Education program provides distance learning students with the opportunity to complete their college credits online.
The agreement states eligible transfer applicants must have at least a 2.0 GPA and 12 credit hours. Students must also earn a C or higher in English composition and a freshman level math course before making the transition.
Participants over the age of 25 are automatically admitted to LSUA if the student needs to complete one remedial course to earn a degree. The memorandum only concerns undergraduate students.
Executive Director for Continuing Education Doug Weimer worked closely with LSUA staff to jumpstart the agreement.
He said there are currently 4,500 students enrolled in the online courses, with 75 percent of them who are not Louisiana residents. He said he hopes a significant portion of these students will register for the transfer program.
“It’s beneficial to everybody involved, Weimer said. “LSU Continuing Education have a number of non-traditional students around the country. … This gives them the pathway to a degree,”
Director for Research, Planning and Communications for Continuing Education Kathy Carroll said the Continuing Education program has been assisting students for 90 years.
“We think it’s important to support non-traditional students who didn’t come out of high school at 18 ready to buckle down and do full time, college-level work,” Carroll said.
Carroll said distance-learning programs allow people to enroll at any time and work at their own pace. Though Continuing Education programs are nationwide, Louisiana in particular has launched efforts in favor of online education for the past decade.
She said the program originated as “correspondence studies” dating back to the ’20s. In these early courses, students and professors would send letters back and forth as a way of submitting assignments.
In more recent times, Carroll said, LSU traded in the stamps and envelopes for laptops and educational software.
“Now it’s mostly online or computer-based,” Carroll said.
She said she thinks one of the reasons the agreement with LSUA took so long to achieve is because of the gradual acceptance of online degrees as a viable form of education. There are not many fully online undergraduate degree programs in the state, she said.
Carroll said the reason the main campus partnered with LSUA first is because all the distance learning courses it offers are undergraduate level classes.
She also said Continuing Education already had some students who were trying to qualify for transfer into an LSUA program. When LSUA agreed to accept those transfer credits, the memorandum was created.
The articulation agreement differs from others of its kind in that the students are only taking one course at a time, Carroll said.
LSU Interim Executive Vice President and Provost Richard Koubek said in the release that the ability for students to obtain a postsecondary degree 100 percent online makes advanced education accessible, affordable and attainable.
“As a system of campuses, it is incumbent for LSU to leverage resources and provide innovative paths for our students to obtain a college degree,” Koubek said in the statement.
Carroll said Continuing Education’s “innovative path” genuinely works to the benefit of the student and his or her future because it caters to their schedules.
“It’s not a calendar-based system,” Carroll said. “It’s a self-paced system.”