Students will soon be able to pursue both two- and four-year degrees
President Hamilton has solidified a partnership contract between Lane Community College and Pacific University. On April 4, Hamilton and Pacific University President Lesley Halik electronically signed the business agreement.
This partnership will bring Pacific University to LCC’s main campus. Their classrooms will be located primarily in the Center for Meeting and Learning.
Bringing PU to campus will allow LCC students an opportunity to achieve a four-year degree while at LCC.
“Number one, you want as many good choices,” Hamilton said. “That student that’s graduating, they shouldn’t have to go to one school or another, they should have a breadth of schools.”
Hamilton has a history of forming partnerships with schools and she brought that expertise with her when she arrived in July of 2017 from New Jersey. She feels forming partnerships with four-year schools expands student’s options and a goal of this partnership is to ease the transfer process.
“I don’t think I was here a day, and I heard complaints about students losing credits when they transfer, and I was horrified,” Hamilton said.
Wanting to start partnership talks, Hamilton invited colleges from across the state to discuss collaborations. Pacific was one of the first to respond.
Pacific University has had articulation agreements with LCC and has been leasing space in the downtown Eugene campus. However, if students wanted to complete a four-year degree through Pacific students would have to attend class on the main campus in portland.
“Our goal would be if they can develop and get a large enough audience down here to develop those last two years of the bachelor’s program down here on our campus so that our students could feed into that,” LCC’s provost Paul Jarrell explained.
This partnership is the beginning of a larger plan to create a nucleus of educational institutions down the road.
“I think that model is one we can see with other institutions as well, and create what’s typically called a University Center where there is a physical presence of multiple universities on a community college,” Jarrel said.
Jarrel explained that this would allow students to have access to more universities while completing four-year degrees locally.
“This university center model is really just about: How do we create more access to a bachelor’s degree that are local,” Jarrell said.
Hamilton and Jarrell expressed they have good relationships with Oregon State and they are working at stronger relations with them.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a signing ceremony has been postponed and will be rescheduled at a later time.
