iforward to have transcripted and advanced standing courses

Last week John Jacobs (the Interim Executive Director for iForward) and I went to Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College http://www.witc.edu/online/index.htm to meet with College Staff about tech college courses for iForward.  It is our goal to offer tech college courses in each career pathway for interested students. These courses will be for upperclassmen as a part of their course of study.  Some of these courses will be advanced standing courses (80% the same as the college), but we would like as many as possible to be “Transcripted”.  This means that the course has 100% of the same curriculum and assessments as the tech college. http://www.witc.edu/highschool/earncredit.htm

 The student earns high school credit and tech college credit at the same time.  After the course they receive a transcript from the tech college that is theirs to take where ever they go.  This college transcript/credit goes with them when they go on to further post secondary training.  http://www.witc.edu/highschool/transferto.htm We want to make the junior and senior year as meaningful as possible for the student.  When they leave iForward, students could have several tech college credits earned and paid for….. and this will help a lot on the time they will spend in college and on the college bills. 

We learned that there is no easy path to forge these relationships with the Tech Colleges.  It would be nice to call up the college president and ask him to help us (which I plan to do).  However, to find out what the courses are that are available, and to find out if they are online…..It has to be one tech college at a time, department by department, Dean by Dean.  But the pay off for our students will be fantastic!