Students, teachers and school administrators gathered at the Augusta University’s Jaguar Student Activities Center on Wednesday afternoon, as AU and Augusta Technical College officialized a major collaboration to benefit transfer students.
Augusta Advantage is the name of the new strategic partnership between the two institutions, which entails a pathway program in which students may earn associates degrees at Augusta Tech and then receive accelerated admissions to transfer all of their credits toward a bachelor’s degree at AU.
“By providing better pathways toward a bachelor’s degree, Augusta University and Augusta Technical College aim to help improve the students’ economic prosperity for years to come,” said Augusta University President Brooks Keel.
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The Augusta Advantage transfer initiative will offer credits toward pathways in eight baccalaureate programs: business administration, communication, computer science, kinesiology, nursing, political science, psychology and social work; “all of which are vital to Georgia’s current and future workforce needs,” Keel said.
Keel and Augusta Technical College President Jermaine Whirl met for a public event in Dr. Roscoe Williams Ballroom to sign the agreement between the schools and to reveal the new logo for the Augusta Advantage program, which also includes a dual enrollment program for high schoolers.
Local students will be able to take up to 30 credit hours from Augusta Tech while still in high school, equivalent to about a year of coursework; further enabling them to earn an associate’s degree through the technical college, and then a bachelor’s at AU within three years.
“This is really this initiative has been focused on ensuring that we have a seamless pathway for our K-12 all the way to Ph.D., right here in our region,” said Whirl.
Augusta Advantage is an expansion of another partnership between AU and ATC, the Cybersecurity to Information Technology Pathway program launched in August of 2021.
Enacting the initiative was a priority for both schools. Keel mentioned that his own son is an alum of both institutions and no stranger to the difficulties in transferring from one to another, adding a personal element that heightened the urgency of the initiative.
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“We’ve been around since ’61; this should have gotten done well before either one of us got here,” said Whirl. Careful not to disparage either his or Keel’s predecessors, the ATC president underscored his and Keel’s struggles and added that of many students in the Augusta area try to take advantage of the city’s only two public higher ed institutions by transferring from one to the other.
“We talked a lot about these personal experiences, and how we can ensure there are no barriers for students,” Whirl said. “Especially those who live here, because they want both, they want a two-year degree and they want to be able to come here.”
Whirl noted that recruitment for the dual enrollment aspect of the program will begin in the fall, in time for the new school year.
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering business for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
