Transfer Credits, Pathways, and Student Mobility | Academic Newsletter | Seneca Polytechnic

by Victoria Baker, Degree and Credit Transfer Office

in the Spring 2017 issue

Seneca College is a recognized leader in the transfer field, both nationally and internationally. Our focus is not just on numbers of agreements, but comprehensive student advising, advocacy, assessment, and development of quality pathways.

Seneca has successfully obtained pathway and research funding from the Ontario Council on Articulation and Transfer (ONCAT) in each year since 2011. Seneca has secured pathway funding to develop new agreements with York University, including the recent Arts & Science and Biotechnology agreements. ONCAT funding is also supporting Seneca’s development of innovative college-to-college partnerships, starting with Cambrian College last year and now funding the development a relationship with Canadore College. In addition, the Centre for Research in Student Mobility continues to receive research funding from ONCAT, enabling new insights into transfer students.

Our specialized Degree and Credit Transfer Office (DCTO) opened in 2001 after research pointed to a gap in the provision of information for students. The office supports students by providing a variety of integrated services, such as Degree Transfer Advisement on a weekly basis across all campuses, to prospective students, current students, and alumni on new and existing diploma-to-diploma, diploma-to-degree, and degree-to-graduate-studies program pathways and connects them with resources and information to support their academic goals. As the central repository for agreements, we work closely with our Academic departments to establish and develop partnerships with Universities and Colleges which encompasses negotiating new articulation agreements and updating existent agreements to reflect curriculum changes and improvements. Seneca’s centralized office acts as a hub for pathways and transfer credit information, and advocates for not only the student, but the academic area and our partners at large when it comes to the dissemination of transfer information.

The DCTO also produces the highly sought after “Degree Transfer Guide” – a robust publication which outlines all pathways available from Seneca programs on to Degrees both internally and externally. We produce this publication annually in both online and hardcopy format, and it is used as a tool for students to plan their pathway to further education.

Enhancing the credit transfer process was a priority for the student team in developing the new student system. The outcome resulted in a new transfer credit module which holds a repository of rules for standard course approvals and course equivalencies. It also provides tracking for courses approved by faculty for transfer credit and appropriate expiry dates for regular review. The external feature of the module allows students to monitor their transfer credit application and has the potential to facilitate a fully on-line application process. To date, a total of 6,217 unique credit transfer course rules have been built into the system which can be applied to over 9,969 courses across all programs. If students apply for transfer credits with an exiting approved rule, the transfer credit can be done automatically.

Joint efforts between the Registrar’s Office and the DCTO have streamlined the process of validating student requests for transfer credits and the processing of pathway agreements with standardized student record notations to meet national and international transcript guidelines.

With a provincial emphasis on student mobility and a growing number of pathway agreements, it is important that we continue to review our transfer credit processes to ensure efficiency and consistency across the college. A Transfer Credit Policy working group has been created to undertake a comprehensive review of the credit transfer process and related procedural and policy gaps that may require revisions to the current academic policy. Should you have any feedback or ideas you would like to provide to the group for consideration, please feel free to email me: Victoria.Baker@senecacollege.ca.

View the Spring 2017 issue of the Academic Newsletter.