Chapter 1: A Strong Academic Foundation
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destination for students seeking bachelor’s degrees. SVSU’s earliest agreements date back to its relationship with Delta College, which played an important role in the birth of the university. SVSU welcomed thousands of students from Delta during its first 34 years and agreed to new articulation agreements in 1997, making transfer to SVSU even smoother for students in 13 specific Delta degree tracks. In 2002, the two schools created a joint-degree arrangement for high school industrial arts teachers.11 In 1997, SVSU signed its first agreement with Kirtland Community College in Roscommon, Mich., and in 2013 the two schools agreed to offer the university’s Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree on KCC’s campus. SVSU also developed an agreement with Mount Pleasant’s Mid-Michigan Community College in 1997, expanding on it in 1999 to allow MMCC law enforcement students to transfer credits to SVSU’s Criminal Justice Department. In addition, SVSU and Mott Community College signed an articulation agreement in 1999, and one year later restructured it to make it easier for the Flint school’s graduates to earn a bachelor’s degree in social work at SVSU. The university also began a partnership with St. Clair County Community College in 1999 to provide teacher certification courses at Port Huron. An articulation agreement with Niagara College formalized the transfer of credits for the Ontario institution’s students seeking a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering.12 Articulation agreements also aid SVSU students working toward specialized degrees. For example, in March 1998 SVSU signed an agreement with Michigan State University allowing students to transfer to any of 27 majors within its College of Agriculture & Natural Resources. SVSU received a $300,000 Agricultural Program Development Grant from the Michigan Department of Education to support this agreement.13 These articulation agreements made it easier for students, many of whom could not afford four years at a university or who had only recently discovered a career path to get the education and degrees they needed.
Changes in the Way We Learn — Technology and the Library
Over the years, SVSU embraced ways to make rapidly changing technologies work for its students. One of the first initiatives made library holdings more accessible. In 1980, SVSU became a charter member of the Valley Library Consortium (VLC), a partnership among the Public Libraries of Saginaw, Delta College and SVSU’s Zahnow Library. In 1989, the VLC expanded to include an additional 14 regional library systems. The project totaled more than $1 million, largely because of construction and technological improvements at each library. A grant from the Harvey Randall Wickes Foundation, a private non-profit charitable organization established after World War II and named for Saginaw businessman and politician H. Randall Wickes, covered much of the expense. Zahnow Library became the de facto headquarters for the consortium, and space behind the circulation desk was reserved for VLC equipment and staff. Work then began on creating an online catalog that included the collections for all member institutions. “One of the future objectives of the consortium is to allow patrons with personal computers to be able to dial in to obtain information about library holdings,” explained Zahnow Library Director Jean Houghton in 1991. Less than two years later, Zahnow Library unveiled the new VALCAT system, a significant pre-World Wide Web innovation through which patrons could access the collections at VLC-member libraries.14
Jean Houghton
