{"id":21099,"date":"2021-08-12T16:13:16","date_gmt":"2021-08-12T20:13:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/?p=21099"},"modified":"2021-08-20T08:10:09","modified_gmt":"2021-08-20T12:10:09","slug":"esu-ncc-partnership-set-career-path-for-student","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/esu-ncc-partnership-set-career-path-for-student\/","title":{"rendered":"ESU, NCC Partnership Set Career Path for Student"},"content":{"rendered":"

East Stroudsburg University (ESU) interim president Kenneth Long and Northampton Community College (NCC) president Dr. Mark Erickson recently announced an exciting transfer partnership between the two institutions. NCC-ESU Pathways to Success: Stronger Together<\/a> will facilitate enhanced and seamless access for NCC students to apply to ESU\u2019s upper-division undergraduate and graduate programs through 2+2+1 pathways.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor many years, ESU and NCC have worked together to provide our region with high quality, affordable public education,\u201d President Long said. \u201cWith this partnership, we are taking these efforts even further by not only enhancing the pathway for students to seamlessly transition between our institutions, but to also provide the financial support that is necessary to ensure that students are able to achieve their educational goals in a timely fashion.\u201d He added, \u201cEast Stroudsburg and Northampton share a common belief that higher education should not only be accessible, but also affordable. This premier partnership provides just that\u2014accessibility and affordability.\u201d<\/p>\n

ESU Provost Joanne Z. Bruno, J.D. said the partnership provides NCC students with the resources they need to transfer to ESU easily and graduate on time. \u201cMany students take a significant amount of time to complete a 4-year degree and in the process, incur an increased amount of debt. We want to blur the lines between NCC and ESU courses, so students have this pathway of ensuring success. We have worked in a transfer scholarship, as well as an incentive to NCC employees if they want to continue their education at a 4-year school. We\u2019ve given them an institutional discount to come to ESU.\u00a0 We really want NCC students to know they will be ESU students. In the near future, we will have NCC courses taught on ESU\u2019s campus and ESU courses taught on NCC\u2019s campus,\u201d she said. \u201cThe whole package is having an alignment of majors\u2014the goal of transferring is to have NCC students come to ESU as juniors, complete another 60 credits at ESU, and get their degree as a junior or senior. This was really an academic village effort.\u201d To make the transition even easier, for NCC students who transfer to ESU without the degree but are close to completing their NCC degree, Bruno said ESU will do a \u201creverse transfer,\u201d working with the student to make sure their credits from ESU transfer back to NCC to satisfy the award of an associate degree.<\/p>\n

ESU has long been a top transfer destination for NCC students, with more than 300 graduates enrolling at ESU each year. Elizabeth Reeves is just one student who can speak to the strength of the schools\u2019 partnership. Reeves graduated with honors from NCC in 2017 and ESU in 2019. While attending school, Reeves raised two daughters as a single mother and tutored students at NCC\u2019s learning center. \u201cI tried to go back to school several times throughout my life,\u201d Reeves said. \u201cMy goal was to go to NCC\u2014I thought, if I don\u2019t go any further, at least I\u2019ll have my associate degree. My goal was a bachelor\u2019s.\u201d Reeves\u2019 hard work and commitment to her studies was obvious. Christine Armstrong, professor of communications at NCC, referred Reeves for a tutoring position in NCC\u2019s Learning Center. \u201cIt just seemed like the natural next step,\u201d Reeves said. When it was time to transfer to ESU, Reeves said she was a bit nervous. \u201cHow would I measure up against the students who were already there? NCC really did prepare me. They have writing-intensive courses, and it did help. I would get a little overwhelmed with some of the big assignments [at ESU], but my grades always reflected good work. When I first started at NCC and got to know some of the other students, I heard \u2018not everything is going to transfer.\u2019 That didn\u2019t happen for me\u2014everything counted. I would imagine it\u2019s really frustrating to have to take some of the same classes because some class didn\u2019t count.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because of her busy schedule, she took classes at both NCC and ESU year-round\u2014opting to take one or two classes per semester rather than a full load of five classes in a single semester. Since graduating from ESU with her bachelor\u2019s in communication, Reeves has not looked back. She continued on to the master\u2019s program at ESU, where she expects to graduate this summer. \u201cMy plan wasn\u2019t always the master\u2019s. I just let the world open up, and that\u2019s where it led,\u201d Reeves said. She also works as a part-time public relations coordinator at Strong Mountain Media, a public relations and digital marketing agency founded by ESU alum Laurie Monteforte. As if Reeves\u2019 schedule was not busy enough, she is also scheduled to teach at NCC this fall. Reeves said her experiences at both NCC and ESU were nothing but positive. \u201cI found everybody to be really supportive. Working in the learning center, it was my supervisor there who recommended me to teach a class. Then going on to ESU\u2014those recommendations are what got me the job in the PR firm. I can\u2019t say enough about how supportive the professors were. They were very understanding, but still had high expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Armstrong is not surprised Reeves has done so well at both schools. \u201cThe thing that made Elizabeth memorable is the thing that makes a lot of students really successful. Elizabeth wasn\u2019t just working for the grade or to get the class done. She really wanted to gain the knowledge. She would do the reading ahead of time, would come to my office hours and ask lots of questions, and would discuss the material to make sure she understood how the material was working.\u201d Armstrong also has high hopes for the NCC\/ESU partnership. \u201cThere are a lot of students who transfer from Northampton to ESU. For most of our students, it\u2019s the best fit and value. Previously, there may have been little hiccups with credits transferring. This agreement smooths over those pieces and students don\u2019t have to worry about those hiccups.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ESU\/NCC Stronger Together partnership<\/a> officially takes effect in fall 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

East Stroudsburg University (ESU) interim president Kenneth Long and Northampton Community College (NCC) president Dr. Mark Erickson recently announced an exciting transfer partnership between the two institutions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":21101,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[143,20,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-esu-success-stories","category-news-release"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21099"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21099"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21111,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21099\/revisions\/21111"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}