Southwest and TSU to Sign a Student Transfer Partnership Agreement During the Annual Southern Heritage Classic Festivities

Southwest Tennessee Community College (Southwest) and Tennessee State University (TSU) will sign a Student Transfer Partnership Agreement that guarantees all the courses Southwest students complete on the Tennessee Transfer Pathways (TTP) will be accepted at TSU and count toward a baccalaureate degree. The signing will take place on Thursday, September 11 at 1 p.m. on Southwest's Macon Cove Campus in the Bornblum Library as part of TSU's community outreach during the Annual Southern Heritage Classic celebration.

"We saw this as a good opportunity to strengthen the pipeline of students coming to Tennessee State from Southwest," said Executive Director of Community College Initiatives Sharon Peters.

The terms of this agreement include the awarding of 10 two-year full TSU scholarships with tuition and room and board to TSU beginning fall 2015. The partnership also contains a dual admissions component that builds on the TTP which was designed to help community college students plan for transferring to a Tennessee public university or select regionally accredited, non-profit, Tennessee private colleges and universities to complete their baccalaureate degree.

An objective of the initiative Peters indicated is "to develop a partnership in which students are steered early on into our degree programs such as engineering, health sciences; the list is endless in terms of what we can do."

On the heels of the TNPromise Scholarship, which provides May 2015 high school graduates the opportunity to attend a community college free of tuition and fees, this partnership ups the stake and makes attending Southwest more attractive. "With our moving toward the Tennessee Promise, we are really trying to highlight Southwest as being an institution that a student can come to for the first two years of their baccalaureate experience and then transfe" said Interim Provost Barbara Roseborough.

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