Past Members

• Rich Bankhead - bankhear@seattleu.edu

• Rebecca Sliger - rsliger@tacomacc.edu

• Edwin Lim - elim@tacomacc.edu

Common Course Numbering - Engr& 240 and Engr& 154 - common myths

Clarification email sent to WCERTE email group

At our WCERTE meeting last week, Carol Hsu asked about the current status of adding Engr& 240 (Engineering Computation) and Engr& 154 (Construction Graphics) to the SBCTC Common Course Number (CCN) list. I checked in with my dean, Katie Gulliford, who is on the Articulation Transfer Council and she shared this information:

• From the May 19 – 20, 2022 minutes of Instruction Commission (link) - Approval of Common Course Numbering – Approval of the following additions to the common course numbering list: ENGR &154 (construction graphics) and ENGR&240 (engineering computation) as recommended by the Articulation Transfer Council. Motion was made by Jennifer Ernst and Kenny Lawson seconded the motion. Motion carried with 29 Ayes.

• Implementation should happen in Summer 2023

• Here is the current list of courses (link) – The new courses should be added to this list later this year.

• A course that many of us are offering that is not on the list is Intro to Material Science (Engr 170 at TCC). There had been some discussion of trying to put together a common course number for that. If someone is interested in taking that on, here is the process (link).

For those of you not familiar with CCNs, here is some background.

A little history from a WCERTE member perspective – Back in the early 2000s, with guidance from the legislature, the SBCTC decided to try to standardize common course numbers across the community colleges. At first, there was even some discussion about standardizing curriculum, but this was quickly dropped. When you see a class called Engr& 214, it just means that the college is offering a course called Statics. It tells you nothing about the course learning outcomes or whether the class is transferable to a particular university. Originally WCERTE opposed this project. Many of the community colleges had matched their numbers with their primary transfer institution. CCs on the Western side of the state tended to match UW numbers. Those on the Eastern side used other numbers. Many felt that most students do a vertical transfer (CC to university) and that matching numbers vertically was more helpful than a horizontal match (CC to CC). This stubbornness on our part to recognize the inevitable meant that WCERTE was not involved in selecting the course numbers themselves. That caused real problems when the numbers selected actually conflicted with the university numbers. (At that time at the UW, Engr 215 was Electric Circuits, while Engr& 215 was Dynamics for CCs.) This is a lesson learned that even if we disagree with something, we should keep our oar in!

Addressing common myths about Common Course Numbers (& courses) -

1. False - & means that the class is transferable – Course articulation/equivalencies must be determined by each CC with each university. You can check university websites for equivalencies. In addition, the SBCTC included aerospace/aviation maintenance and early childhood education courses in the CCN list. These are not university transferable classes.

2. False – if a class doesn’t have an & it is not transferable – Some courses were developed after the CCN list was implemented (example, Engr 240). In other cases, the CC decided that not to use common course number, often because they felt that the common course number was too confusing. For example, on the CCN, Java 1 is CS& 141, and there is no Java 2. However, most CCs chose to stick with CS 142 (Java 1) and 143 (Java 2) because these match the UW, which is the only university that really uses Java.

The & causes us a lot of headaches at the CC level. When registering for classes, students have to know whether the class has an & or not. One good thing is that it has allowed me to use common course numbers on our WCERTE advising grids.

Hope this is helpful!

Rebecca

Rebecca N. Sliger, Ph.D.

Professor – Engineering

Tacoma Community College

Bldg 15, Room 134

6501 S. 19th St.

Tacoma, WA 98466-6100

Goals of the Working Group:

Coming soon