The hassled process of determining a future four-year university to attend has just become easier as San Francisco State University introduced 83 additional Associate Degrees for Transfer opportunities for community college students.
ADTs are educational streamliners that map the way for students studying at one of 116 California Community Colleges to earn 60 lower major-related and California State University general education units before guaranteeing transfer to SFSU.
SFSU has offered ADTs since 2014, and now, over a decade later, the expansion totals 264 pathways. The pathways cover six academic departments dedicated to helping students complete their bachelor’s degrees within four years.
Christopher Sugarman, university articulation officer and administrative analyst, said the additional ADTs in arts and science make SFSU a more attractive school to students deciding on their academic future due to widened study options.
“The more departments we have that potentially offer ADT pathways, they’re going to populate for that student that is looking,” said Sugarman about transfer students searching for their next university. “So with 264 pathways, we’re popping up.”
Part of Sugarman’s job is to work with the chancellor’s office, review legislation and coordinate degree options with department chairs. Before the expansion took place, Sugarman said paths were considered straightforward and linear; however, recent discussions have led to greater flexibility.
“As time has gone on, many of us and academic communities have tried to open our ways of thinking,” Sugarman said. “A student studying communication studies might be interested in English. And so, we started looking at multiple pathways that were appropriate academic matches for the major. Those are the revisions that we were okay thinking about.”
Sugarman said SFSU offers the needed support to make future studies and careers possible.
“We want students to be able to move forward,” Sugarman said. “We want students to be able to transfer. We want student transfer to be as seamless as possible. We want students to be able to move forward with the future options that make sense, and that’s what the ADT program offers.”
These academic matches are extensively discussed with department chairs to ensure ADT pathways align with the associate degrees earned in community college.
Burcu Ellis, professor and department chair of international relations, backed up those revisions. Ellis used the related courses of global studies, foreign languages, history and others to expand international studies ADT options from two paths to 20.
“These ADTs provide that offramp for the students to be able to discover other options and say, ‘Oh, okay, I can do something else with this degree,’” Ellis said. “It doesn’t have to be international relations; it can be something else. I think that opportunity for finding the right major for students is a little easier when the student has now had two years of coursework right under their belt.”
There are some downsides to the ADT pathways that Ellis recognizes — the most prominent being that transfer students feel stuck. Ellis said there are limitations when it comes to a student’s ability to change their mind about future studies and career choices since the ADT approach offers a rigid determination of studies.
“They’re getting kind of pigeonholed into majors as they are starting,” Ellis said. “The problem is that a student’s mind changes as they explore new options.”
Student graduation rates reveal that in 2022, two-year transfer students were at a 44.8% rate of graduating and four-year transfers reached 76.7%. Both rates are higher than four-year freshmen who graduated at 28.4%.
The higher graduation numbers for transfer students can be attributed to the package deal of an ADT that promises students an adequate amount of units completed before entering a university.
Sophia Lilot transferred to SFSU from City College of San Francisco after earning an ADT in international relations. Once she switched from her previous area of study of Japanese, the process to earn an associate degree under the ADT was made simple.
“I did have a few classes to catch up on, but once I was on that pathway, it was really easy,” Lilot said. “I had gotten accepted into SF State a semester or two before I was supposed to graduate. In my last semester, I had to take some extra units, but they had already admitted me.”
Lilot entered SFSU with over 60 of the required ADT units — some coming from an international baccalaureate that SFSU accepted. Now, as a third-year student, Lilot said not having this degree would have caused her to take extra classes.
“There were a lot of degree requirements that I needed at SF State that I was able to get down at City College,” Lilot said. “There were a lot of classes that I would have had to take with that major. I would have had to petition them. But as soon as I switched my major, it was just really easy.”
Recent community college transfer and child development student Emily Vong didn’t know about ADTs before transferring to SFSU.
Although a junior, Vong said she still considers herself a sophomore since she has to take more courses this semester. Despite this, she said the support she receives at SFSU outweighs what she has gotten at community college.
“Now I think I am on the right path,” Vong said. “My grades are so much better than what they were. I think [an ADT] would probably have given me more support.”
