Three Community Colleges Selected as Beta Test Sites for CollegeFish.org Launch
JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI - Three Mississippi community colleges have been
selected to serve as the first Beta Test Sites for the launching of CollegeFish.org,
a web-based college transfer program, in the United States. They include
Copiah-Lincoln Community College, Holmes Community College and Jones
County Junior College.
CollegeFish.org, designed by Phi Theta
Kappa, is a highly interactive web-based platform aimed at improving community
college students' planning for transfer to senior institutions. Access
to CollegeFish.org is offered free of charge to all community college students
and their institutions. The CollegeFish.org website profiles more than
2,000 senior colleges and 3,000 transfer student scholarship offerings
from a multitude of sources. The website is designed to support traditional
transfer advising by providing students with planning tools and access
to information that will allow them to plan and make good transfer decisions.
According to Phi Theta Kappa's Executive Director Rod A. Risley
the three Mississippi colleges were selected through a competitive application
process. "Their institutions' desire to assist students preparing for
transfer played heavily in the decision to select these colleges as the
three CollegeFish.org Beta Test Sites in Mississippi," he added. Mississippi
is the first state in the nation to be offered use of the transfer tool for
community college students and administrators.
The project
will equip community colleges with new technology to incorporate into
their advising and/or orientation programs, allowing all students from
their community college to begin early planning for transfer to a senior
college. In addition, enhanced technology will allow community college
faculty/transfer advisors and administrators to actively track transfer
progress as well as enhance the advising experience. Once the beta test
in the state of Mississippi has been completed, the program will be rolled
out to other community college systems across the nation.
A
team of Phi Theta Kappa staff members will visit these campuses to assist
with the initial implementation of the program, providing progress reports,
advising and assisting the local test site team over the course of the next
year of beta testing. Initial meetings will be held on these campuses February
18-20, 2009, and these colleges may begin using the program with their students
after this time.
Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society, headquartered
in Jackson, Mississippi, is the largest honor society in American higher
education with 1,250 chapters on college campuses in all 50 of the United
States, Canada, Germany, the Republic of Palau, the Republic of the Marshall
Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, the British Virgin Islands,
the United Arab Emirates and U.S. territorial possessions. More than two
million students have been inducted since its founding in 1918, with approximately
100,000 students inducted annually.
