Redmond hasn’t really been known as a “college town.”
But residents of Redmond and underserved communities to the east, such as Sammamish and Duvall, will soon have a new, close-to-home and convenient place to earn a bachelor’s degree.
On Monday, City University of Seattle (CityU) announced a partnership with Lake Washington Technical College (LWTC) to bring its Bachelor of Arts in Management (B.A.M.) program directly to the LWTC campus in Redmond, near the east entrance of Marymoor Park, beginning in the fall of 2008.
Through this partnership, former and current LWTC students will be able to transfer up to 90 LWTC credits into the B.A.M. program. The program’s also available to others with 90 or fewer lower-level credits from another college, who want to apply them to a four-year undergraduate degree, as long as the courses are comparable to those offered at LWTC.
“This is just one partnership to get our students baccalaureate degrees — we have our own in applied design, as well,” explained Dr. Sharon McGavick, LWTC president.
CityU is well-known as an institution which helps working adults continue their professional development in areas such as business management and teaching. LWTC is renowned for its technical and vocational training programs. The B.A.M. partnership will serve people who are already committed to, or employed in, fields such as information technology, health and fitness or manufacturing and transportation — and want to take their careers to a higher level.
The curriculum for the B.A.M. degree will include courses in critical thinking, ethics and leadership, organizational communications, human resources, project management and marketing principles.
McGavick noted, “We see more and more people dropping in and out of college, because of scheduling demands and the time and money it takes to commute to classes.” However, she said that even when people take just a few college courses at a time, “it’s like a savings account — you save up enough credits and you can buy a degree.”
Stepping back into the shoes of a student can be confusing or intimidating, especially for people who’ve been in the full-time workforce for a while, but staff at the LWTC career center and advisors from CityU are on-hand to help prospective students decide whether the B.A.M. program in Redmond is right for them, said McGavick.
Steve Olswang, interim provost at CityU, was the interim chancellor at University of Washington-Bothell when that branch campus established a four-year degree partnership with its next-door neighbor, Cascadia Community College.
Cascadia offers many traditional liberal arts classes, whereas at LWTC, “You can get a great technical career education here and then go back and get the management skills you need,” said Olswang. “This is the first program of its kind. It’s a great opportunity for people in this community who thought they had no more options — not the traditional transfer student. We designed (the B.A.M. program) to fill this niche. None of the public institutions are doing this.”
Lee Gorsuch, president of CityU, said he’s “confident students will find the (B.A.M.) curriculum intellectually stimulating … (and) it’s good fortune for us to have hybrid courses for students who take courses partly in person and partly online. For those concerned about time constraints and gas prices, students are looking for options to pursue their dreams.”
Both Gorsuch and McGavick remarked that online courses have become more rigorous in recent years and that those who take them often report feeling more satisfied with the amount of attention they get from instructors than those who have “face time” with professors but little personal engagement.
The fall quarter for CityU’s and LWTC’s B.A.M. program at the Redmond campus begins Oct. 1. Applications are currently being accepted.
Those interested in immediate enrollment or curious about possible enrollment at a later time may contact advisor Kathleen Hastings at khastings@cityu.edu or (425) 709-5291 or visit the Redmond campus of LWTC at 6505 176th Ave. NE; (425) 869-4208 or (425) 883-4610. The Web site is www.lwtc.ctc.edu/redmondcampus.
