Since launching in January of 2023, the University Transfer Degree (UTD) program at Fox Valley Technical College has gained popularity among students who want to start their college career stay close to home and complete their general education requirements at a more affordable cost.
With almost 400 students enrolled in the UTD program, graduates with an Associate of Arts or Associate of Science degree can transfer to a partner school with junior status to complete their bachelor’s degree.
Dr. Marcus Lewis, associate dean of General Education, recently joined WHBY’s Hayley Tenpas to explain what classes fall within each of these degrees and why students of all ages are looking into this flexible option.
Tap the video to listen to the interview or scroll down to read the transcript.
Tenpas: Welcome back to Focus Fox Valley for our Focus on Careers with Fox Valley Technical College and an opportunity to connect with careers of promise. Today we are connecting you to the University Transfer Degree program at Fox Valley Technical College. A great option for students looking to stick closer to home for a few years and several other reasons that Dr. Marcus Lewis is going to explain to us here today as we highlight this amazing program. Dr. Lewis is the Associate Dean of General Studies with Fox Valley Technical College. Hello to you.
Lewis: Hello. Thanks for having me.
Tenpas: Good afternoon. We like to get to know our guests just a bit. This is always a fun question of how you came to be in your role at Fox Valley Tech. I will let you it away and explain your journey to us.
Lewis: I am fairly new to the college. I have only been there for a few months, but I have been in higher education for over a decade. I worked in multicultural student affairs and services for a long time, in a faculty role, and not new to the WTCS, I have been in the technical college system for a few years now, having worked for Madison College and having a lot of teaching experience as well. My background is as a music educator so just kind of all over the map, well suited for general studies. General studies is a good fit and I am excited to be at the college, there are a lot of wonderful things happening and good momentum behind these degrees especially.
Tenpas: Excellent. What does your day-to-day look like as associate dean of General Studies?
Lewis: Well, it can vary day by day, but I get to work with two dynamic teams of faculty, the social sciences faculty and the math faculty. I also work with the folks in the Teaching and Learning Center (TLC), who help our students with tutoring, so I chat with them and our Testing and Assessment Center and then run the University Transfer Degree program as well. There are a lot of good opportunities to collaborate across the college with my colleagues and then also I get to do some fun outreach like this. So, it really varies from day to day.
Tenpas: Very cool. Let us better understand what you do and learn more about the University Transfer Degree program. I understand it is pretty new to the college so we will talk about the options for our listeners, and we will get a better idea of the courses. How many credits? Fill us in a little bit.
Lewis: These degrees are fairly new, as you mentioned, they are just about two years old. They started in January of 2023; it is a really exciting opportunity for students here in the Valley. Essentially, you can do your entire gen ed sequence which is 61 credits, two emphases, Associate of Science or Associate of Arts, depending on what you want to transfer to do. We have numerous transfer partners already established in the area like UW Oshkosh, UW Green Bay, Marion and Lakeland College. There are a few more in the hopper, including one I think we will talk about a little bit later, but it is a great opportunity for folks because right now with current tuition this entire program, depending on which one you do, is just under $10,000. To get 60 college credits for under $10,000 in your own backyard in a combination of in-person or online offerings, it is a great deal for our students. It is a great benefit to our community as well because, like you said, folks might want to stay a little bit closer to home is what we are finding from a lot of our traditional-age students. But we also have older students who are in it to some non-traditional students. I am thinking in particular about this veteran who served several years in the military and speaking with her. One of the things she was saying is that she served for a while, she has a small family, but now this is her time, and she is doing this for herself.
We are doing some events to bring them together and build some community because when students are taking general education courses, we do not want them to feel lost out there in the wilderness. We have a couple of faculty mentors from the Associate of Arts, Associate of Science, STEM and Social Science who work with the students. We are trying to build some community, we are doing college tours as well, getting students to get their boots on the ground for some of the transfer partners we have scheduled for this semester. So, it is new and there is a lot of exciting energy. This is our first year with the faculty mentors, doing tours and community building, so a lot is going on, but it is an exciting time to be at Fox Valley Tech.
Tenpas: My goodness, I love the example you gave because I will be honest, my first thought of an example is the traditional out-of-high-school students who may want to stay closer to home with mom and dad to save some money. You are taking these classes already when you do go to a four-year college, but I love the example you gave because it goes outside the box a bit.
Lewis: With the affordability, flexibility and multiple modalities of offering these classes it is a great choice for anyone. Sometimes folks would think it is designed for a person who is right out of high school, which is true, but it is anyone who is looking to go to school. Costs are skyrocketing in higher education so finding a high-quality and affordable option is great. It is not just for undecided students who are trying to figure out what they want to do. What I am finding is that many of the students know where they want to go and what they want to do, but let’s be honest, the costs are so high that they need a reasonable, affordable and high-quality option. We are in a position now where we can offer that right here, and we have some interesting classes that I do not think people would expect. We have high-level math, for example, we are going up to Calculus 3 now, which is a fairly new offering. We are doing Physics 1 and Physics 2 with calculus enhancement. Then on the social science humanities side, we are doing all different kinds of psychology classes like educational psychology, developmental psychology and abnormal psychology. The same courses that you are going to find at some of our fantastic transfer partner schools in the area, you can take right here at Fox Valley Tech, so it is great.
Tenpas: What do your enrollment numbers look like for this program? How many students have you seen pursuing these degrees?
Lewis: We have hundreds of students who are doing this right now, but it depends on how you look at the data. There have been about 400 students who have declared this as their program, students will stop out or transfer out, it just depends. We are hopeful that they will stay and finish the degree but if there is an opportunity for them that makes the most sense or employment changes, they can pursue those things, but it has been a great option. A couple hundred of them have been participating and we have had a few graduates. Considering we just started two years ago, we are looking forward to really boosting those numbers here in the few semesters ahead.
Tenpas: All right. The question might be what is next? After the break, we will talk about where students are heading next, including the addition of another pathway that launches tomorrow. We will talk more about that after the break.
Tenpas: Welcome back to Focus Fox Valley, it is our Focus on Careers with Fox Valley Technical College here today. Dr. Marcus Lewis, associate dean of General Studies, is joining us here today. We do have a caller on the line, we will welcome Bill with a question for Marcus. Go ahead, Bill you are on the air.
Bill: Hi. Yes, thank you for this program. My granddaughter is a senior at North and is thinking about elementary education. She wondered if she could do two years at Fox Valley Tech and get credit for all the classes when she transfers to Oshkosh or Whitewater.
Lewis: Thanks so much for calling in and it is great to hear that there is another young person out there who is thinking about going into education. The short answer is yes, we have some pre-major pathways that we are constructing, one of which is for education. In the meantime, she can still take general education classes, depending on where she wants to go, I know you threw out a couple of different institutions there we do have a partnership with UW Oshkosh, so we can get that worked out for her so that we can knock out those general education requirements. It sounds like it could be a great fit and I would love to connect with her in the admissions area so that we can make sure we are getting folks where they need to go and the information. We usually loop in our transfer coordinator at Fox Valley Tech, her name is Rachel and she’s phenomenal. We do not want to have any surprises so we like to have that communication upfront, the earlier we can get started the better.
Bill: You mentioned $10,000 for 60 credits. That is a couple of years, and it sounds like the UW system might be double that cost.
Lewis: I cannot speak about that entirely because I am not entirely familiar with their pricing. Right now, our current tuition and this is just tuition not including required fees or books is just about $10,000. Usually with the system every year there is a slight increase, it is usually around 3%, but still, that would be about $9,500 next year. It is a great opportunity, for example, we did a head-to-head comparison for calc 3 because we want to get that out as a possibility for some local high schools who might want to have Calculus 3 for their students and it is 50% of the cost of one of our four-year partners in the area. It is a great opportunity to get a high-quality education at an affordable price.
Bill: Well, thank you very much.
Lewis: Thank you and safe travels.
Tenpas: Bill, thanks for the call today. I love a caring grandparent or parents out there, and that is who I am thinking is listening here today. I do want to highlight once students have graduated from this two-year program where are they headed next?
Lewis: I mean, it varies. One of our goals is to make sure our students can get the transfer they are looking for, and we do have existing transfer partners right now. Then some of our students will go into the workforce because we consider this to be an employment-enhancing degree as well. With the general education classes, you learn that our Fox Valley Tech Employability Essentials are our program outcomes. They are kind of our guiding light to make sure our students are well-prepared to take the next step. But like we were talking about tomorrow if I can just skip ahead to this part, I am excited.
Tenpas: I am excited to break the news a little bit.
Lewis: Tomorrow we are going to be signing a new transfer agreement with Ripon College. It is going to be a great opportunity, and Ripon has done some wonderful things recently like making a significant investment in their STEM areas and a brand-new science renovation, I think it was around $20 or $25 million. They are starting an engineering program there. Their president and their provost will be joining us tomorrow on campus for a signing with our president and provost. It will be fantastic, and it will give some more opportunities for students in the Valley, another option to transfer to and get that high-quality education. They will be eligible for some wonderful programs and experiences there that some of our other partners do not have right now, but it is going to be a great buffet of options and we have 2 or 3 more schools in the hopper for this semester that I’m hoping by the time commencement happens, we will have 2 or 3 more agreements signed with schools.
Tenpas: That is a great teaser, we will have to stay and wait. That is exciting, but you mentioned UW Oshkosh and now Ripon College starting tomorrow. Any others that you can shout out?
Lewis: Yep. UW – Green Bay as well as Lakeland and Marion.
Tenpas: Wonderful, going back to the student, is there an ideal student for this? What qualities do you see as you are seeing students go through this particular program?
Lewis: What I love about this is we are in a great position to meet students on their level where they are because whether or not they are students who are not entirely sure what they want to do, there are a lot of great options for them, or whether it’s a student who’s a high flyer who knows they want to go to, say UW Madison or UW Milwaukee but for cost reasons, it is just not practical right now. It is for everybody; we have some amazing facilities. If you are going into the sciences, we have an across-the-board phenomenal faculty and communications, world languages, social sciences, sciences, math and more, who are there for the right reasons to teach and to engage. I would say it is for any student who is looking to take that next level, whether it is exploratory, or they have a little bit more certainty. Ultimately the real value is going to be in the skills and the relationships that they will build on our campus. Whether it is on our campus here or at Riverside or whether they are online students. It is a great opportunity to take that next step without carrying the burden of absolutely crippling debt that they’ll spend a lifetime paying off.
Tenpas: One final thing and we had a great example of it with Grandpa Bill calling in, his granddaughter is a senior. I know that high school seniors can get a jump start at this a little bit quickly, the University Transfer Degree Academy.
Lewis: Yes, we are starting a transfer degree academy next year. Applications are open right now, you can go to http://www.fvtc/avademies to learn more, but it is 27 credits for about $1,500. To get 27 credits, just about half of the degree knocked out. They are going to come to our campus and be with us in the morning. Take 27 college credits throughout the whole school year and then they will have the afternoon where they can go be high schoolers. They can go take those extracurriculars, be in sports, be in the band, they can be in those things and still participate in their school. It is a great opportunity. We have been sharing it with a lot of high schools, so we are excited for folks to take advantage of the opportunity.
Tenpas: Now, I hope some parents are listening and maybe nudging those juniors.
Lewis: Yes, start planning.
Tenpas: Wonderful. Well, Dr. Lewis, it has been fun to get to know you and talk about this program. I want to make sure our listeners know where to go if they want to do a little Google search after this.
Lewis: They can check us out at www.fvtc.edu/universitytransfer and then to learn more about the academies is www.fvtc.edu/academies.
Tenpas: Wonderful. Dr. Marcus Lewis, associate Dean of General Studies, joining us here today for our Focus on Careers. Thank you so much.
Lewis: Thank you so much for having me. Have a great day.
Tenpas: Absolutely, likewise.
