‘Extended Spring’ Sessions No Longer Counted – City College Official

At least 88 community college students thought they would be able to enrol in four-year universities for fall 2013 classes, but Pasadena City College’s (PCC) sudden changes in rules may hold their unit requirements lacking.

Dr. Robert H. Bell, PCC’s senior vice president and assistant superintendent of academic and student affairs, said  through a March 15 letter that “extended spring” sessions “have been added to help our students complete their degrees or transfer to a four-year institution.” Bell added that “this will meet the needs of students who submitted applications to the University of California and California State University and still need to complete a requirement for fall admission.”

Both California State University and University of California systems, the schools where most PCC students transfer, require incoming juniors to finish prerequisites by the spring semester before fall enrolment.

However, PCC last Thursday sent an email to students, saying its newly invented “extended spring” session would no longer be included in spring transcripts, as the school had initially promised. Instead, those classes would count toward summer grades, the Pasadena Star-News reported.

The cancellation is partly because PCC needed to allocate extended spring grades into summer transcripts and not doing so would imperil about $7.6 million in state apportionment funds, Juan F. Gutierrez, a spokesman for PCC, told the Star-News.

A 19-year-old student named Alyssa Nunez, who had a 4.3 GPA when she graduated from San Dimas High School, thought she settled the 60-unit requirement for admittance to UC San Diego because PCC had promised that extended spring classes will be recorded on spring transcripts. But now, she only has 58 units because of the unaccredited U.S. History class she took in the extended spring session, the newspaper reported.

“I had been responsible. I had planned ahead,” Nunez told the Star-News. “The school keeps disappointing me. I’ve gone from being very excited to being very afraid that I’m going to get my admission revoked.”

Nunez had to cancel her fall orientation and is undecided whether she would still search for an apartment around UCSD or follow up on conditional employment offers because she doesn’t know if she’ll be in San Diego come fall, the Star-News reported. In addition, Nunez said she was forced to take 17 units in the spring semester because she had already paid more than $400 for college admission applications.

Quang Cao, 27, an El Monte resident who took an extended spring course, told the newspaper that PCC is not considerate of the students’ lifestyles.

“They don’t think about how we feel,” Cao told the Star-News. “They ask themselves what’s the bottom line? Are we making money?”

As early as August 2012, students who were on PCC’s student advisory board expressed concerns on the administration that four-year universities would not accept the extended spring change, 26-year-old Kevin Clinton, an associate chief justice of the supreme council, told the newspaper.

“We told the board of trustees and the administration that there would be all of these issues,” Clinton told the Star-News. “They said they could do it; they could change the calendar. Dr. Bell is not doing his job in regards to making sure students transfer. Everything he does is reactionary.”

PCC learned about the transcript change in the first week of June, Gutierrez told the newspaper. The Star-News reported that the officials waited at least 11 days before informing students via email, when PCC students had already walked in their commencement ceremonies, making some students upset, the Star-News said.

“The administration should inform the students on what’s happening or what they’re planning to do,” student Ben Nguyen told the newspaper. “And not letting the students know…it’s a little messed up.”

Gutierrez said the administration used that time to determine the students who would be affected by the spring-to-summer transcript change. Gutierrez initially told the Star-News that only 41 students would be affected, but later said another 47 students notified the school that their transfer status was at risk after they received PCC’s June 20 email.

The newspaper tried to contact Bell but he did not return several phone calls or an email seeking comment.

The controversy began when PCC’s Board of Trustees voted to eliminate its six-week winter intersession. Many students complained that the new schedule wouldn’t allow them to take enough credits to be able to transfer in the fall, the Star-News reported.

The solution of PCC officials is to have a six-week intersession tacked at the end of spring semester, which started earlier than usual this year. More than 9,000 students registered for extended spring, and at least 88 students will be affected by the change, Gutierrez told the newspaper.

“We’re working with the universities to have them honor and admit the students pending the passing of an extended spring class,” Guittierez told the Star-News. “We don’t expect that this will impact our transfer students in the fall. We will make sure their transfer process is smooth.”

Gutierrez added that two universities have already said they will accept extended spring grades even though these will not be included in summer transcripts, but he declined to reveal the names of these institutions.

Any PCC student whose provisional fall acceptance letter is in jeopardy should email complete@pasadena.edu. PCC has formed teams that will help the affected students enrol to four-year institutions this Fall, Gutierrez told the newspaper.