Educators Discuss Benefits of DirectConnect to UCF Program

By Gene Kruckemyer April 30, 2008

Central Florida is home to the most productive community college-university partnership in America, and leaders are working hard to showcase how important the partnerships are to ensuring access to higher education. 

More than 140 Central Florida educators gathered April 25 at UCF’s second College Access Summit to discuss those partnerships and how best to communicate to students and their parents about the DirectConnect to UCF program, which ensures admission to graduates from the community-college partners.

David Harrison, vice provost of UCF Regional Campuses, said the program is a “public promise to the region,” specifically to graduates from Brevard, Lake-Sumter, Seminole and Valencia community colleges, who are guaranteed UCF admission and the opportunity to earn a bachelor’s degree.

The academic leaders at the summit were from Central Florida high schools, community colleges and UCF, but they focused their attention on younger students.

The need for more bachelor’s degrees is pressing, said Jim Drake, president of Brevard Community College. He pointed to a recent study that determined 1 million new degrees would be needed in Florida by 2027 for the state to keep its economy going.  He said that the partnership between community colleges and UCF's regional campuses was the most cost-effective way of expanding degree production.

Communicating with families early and often was a common theme among participants. Lake County School Superintendent Anna Cowin said her looking-ahead-at-college advice used to be given to sixth-graders; now she tells that message to fourth- and fifth-graders.  The group agreed to do more to promote the benefits of higher education to young people -- particularly the advantages offered through DirectConnect.

To help spread that message, the educators looked both outward and inward.

They said leaders at Boys & Girls Clubs, YMCAs, community organizations, places of worship and elsewhere should encourage children to pursue higher education.

Those in attendance said they, too, need to tout the DirectConnect program more through various resources such as career programs, the Internet and, ideally, additional guidance counselors. One Web site praised during the session was Facts.org, the state’s official online advising system for education and career planning.

To help speed the transition of high school students to the community colleges and then to UCF, the consensus at the summit was that curriculum, testing and advising be more integrated so graduates can move to the next level more seamlessly.  Examples of "best practices" in this regard were shared. Smoothing out those bumps is something the summit participants were challenged to work on and discuss at future summits.

UCF and the community colleges in 2005 formed the Central Florida Higher Education Consortium, which established the DirectConnect to UCF program.

More than 18,000 students have enrolled in the program, and last year, community college transfer students received more than half of the bachelor's degrees awarded by UCF.

For more information about the DirectConnect partnership, visit www.regionalcampuses.ucf.edu.

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UCF Stands For Opportunity: The University of Central Florida is a metropolitan research university that ranks as the 6th largest in the nation with more than 48,000 students. UCF's first classes were offered in 1968. The university offers impressive academic and research environments that power the region's economic development. UCF's culture of opportunity is driven by our diversity, Orlando environment, history of entrepreneurship and our youth, relevance and energy. For more information visit http://news.ucf.edu.

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