A new Associate in Engineering Science degree allows Front Range Community College students a clearer and easier path to a four-year degree from the Colorado School of Mines, FRCC President Andy Dorsey said this week.
“This new AES degree will make it easier for our graduates to smoothly transfer more credits to Mines — and will also form the basis for upcoming agreements with the University of Colorado and Colorado State University,” Dorsey said via email.
FRCC has already developed an excellent transfer program for engineering students, Dorsey said. “...And when our graduates continue their studies at four-year universities, they are just as successful as the students who start there.”
The Colorado Community College System, or CCCS, and the School of Mines signed an agreement this week that streamlines the process of transferring credits and ensuring that the credits earned at the two-year institutions will transfer. CCCS is the state’s largest system of higher education in the state, with 13 colleges — including Front Range Community College and its Boulder County campus.
The new AES degree will serve a direct track from community colleges statewide to Mines, a public STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) university consistently ranked among the best in the nation for return on investment, according to a CCCS news release.
“Colorado School of Mines is excited to partner with CCCS on this new degree program and pathway to Mines,” said Mines President Paul C. Johnson in the news release. “It is important for us to provide admission opportunities for students from all backgrounds, and particularly those who dream of being engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs, but may not be able to enter Mines directly from high school.”
Joe Garcia, chancellor of CCCS, said many of the state’s community college students may see the transfer process overly complicated and a transfer to Mines completely out of reach. “This system-wide partnership with Mines offers our students a straightforward pathway to an engineering degree from one of the most prestigious institutions in the nation,” Garcia said in the news release.
Faculty at Mines collaborated with colleagues at CCCS to develop the two-year curriculum, which tracks as closely as possible to the rigorous core curriculum at Mines, the news release said. Graduates of the AES program will have completed the core engineering requirements while in community college, maximizing earned transfer credit at Mines and creating a pathway to complete any bachelor’s degree at Mines within two to three years of completion of the associate degree.
Pre-engineering classes at FRCC are small, so students get a lot of personal support, which helps them master complex math concepts and build a strong foundation for their upper-level courses, FRCC President Dorsey said.
In FRCC’s engineering projects class, students work closely with professional engineers to design real-world solutions for engineering problems, Dorsey said.
“When our students complete their associate degree,” he said, “they’re well prepared to continue on their bachelor’s in engineering.”
