Regional Meeting – Southwest – October 27, 2006           

Facilitator:  Paul Dovyak

With 9 in attendance, we had rich discussion about retention and graduation rates, trends toward statewide general education cores, articulation processes with associate degree programs, loan forgiveness and varied use of criminal background checks of students.  

BSW programs are more responsible to defend retention and graduation rates within their schools as enrollment pressure affect the entire University.   Some states are requiring a common general education core to reduce the expense of repetition due to transfer or change of major.  Additionally, programs struggle to stabilize a pre-requisite liberal arts foundation while opening access points for early and late declaration of major and transfer students.  We revisited the discussion of ‘what biology’ is necessary for social work. 

State funding pressures narrow the course completion schedule and restrict the flexibility of students to change majors, ie. to social work.  Several faculty described models of retention, guides to track general education requirements, curriculum co-requisites and strategies for developing articulation agreements with community colleges. 

Two advocacy issues were criminal background checks and loan forgiveness.  There was some hint that pre-homeland security processes have become emboldened to screen college applicants for credit risks and dated misdemeanor offenses as a way of discouraging college attendance.   The increasing burden of loans for education discourages social work graduates from seeking employment in economically depressed areas and increasing support for Federal loan forgiveness legislations was urged.  pd