St. Thomas is one step closer to opening an affiliated two-year college.
The St. Thomas Newsroom reported Monday that on April 28, the Board of Trustees issued conditional approval for the new school, which will aim to admit lower-income students who might feel unprepared for the university’s four-year bachelor’s program.
Because the board gave the two-year school the OK, the program can now be submitted for approval in three upcoming steps. The first step is for St. Thomas faculty to recommend to President Julie Sullivan and Provost Richard Plumb that they “confer” an associate of arts degree.
Sullivan and Plumb must agree that St. Thomas should add an associate of arts degree to its current repertoire of bachelor’s, master’s, education specialist and doctorate degrees.
Doug Hennes, vice president of University Relations, said the exact associate degrees St. Thomas will offer have not yet been determined, as Biology Professor Jill Manske — chosen last fall to help plan for the two-year college — and other faculty are “still developing the curriculum” but “expect it will be a lot of Core Curriculum classes.”
After Sullivan and Plumb send their approval, the Minnesota Office of Higher Education must authorize St. Thomas to confer the degree, according to the Newsroom. Finally, the Higher Learning Commission, a federal-level organization that gives university degrees their accreditation, must approve of the associate degree addition.
Hennes said that because St. Thomas has had all of its programs accredited by the Higher Learning Commission in the past, accreditation for the the associate of arts should not encounter roadblocks.
“We believe if we get the faculty and state approval, we can demonstrate to the Higher Learning Commission that it too should authorize St. Thomas to confer an associate of arts degree,” Hennes said.
Before the two-year school clears these three hurdles, administration must ensure that tuition would be feasible for low-income students, who are the proposed school’s target demographic.
“We also need to make sure we can afford this,” Hennes said, adding that it would be necessary to raise additional scholarship funds and create endowments.
The Newsroom reported, “The Board of Trustees urged the administration to continue to raise endowment funds for student scholarships. St. Thomas already has received a $3 million pledge for the project from a donor.”
Hennes said the reason for the intense focus on providing scholarships is to provide students who might come from “modest backgrounds” with the opportunity to earn a St. Thomas degree without the financial burden a four-year degree at the university can bring.
“The goal is to have students come out of the two-year school with little or no debt,” Hennes said.
In line with the objectives enumerated in the recent Strategic Plan, St. Thomas wants to admit about 300 students to the two-year school who normally would not feel academically or financially prepared to earn a bachelor’s degree at the school.
The Newsroom reported that the creation of this school would help satisfy the objective in the Strategic Plan to “(increase) the number of low-income, first-generation, minority and immigrant students attending college, and improve their retention and graduation rates.”
The school will also aim to admit students with lower test scores and GPAs than the typical four-year St. Thomas student.
The ultimate goal of the school, according to Hennes, is to prepare the students for their lives ahead. After two years, some may choose to complete a bachelor’s degree at St. Thomas or a different university or to enter the workforce.
Hennes said St. Thomas administrators working on the program are modeling it after another Midwestern university’s cost-friendly institution.
“A two-year Catholic college operated by a four-year Catholic university would be the second in the United States, following the opening of Arrupe College by Loyola University Chicago last fall,” the Newsroom reported.
Sophie Carson can be reached at sophia.carson@stthomas.edu.