AA AS Learning Community

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

This workshop provided a comprehensive overview of the Associate in Arts (AA) and Associate in Science (AS) degrees aimed at students who plan to transfer to a four-year university. It detailed the structure of these programs, which include a general education core, elective courses, and specific requirements like cultural competence and digital literacy. Emphasis was placed on the importance of choosing courses that align with students' educational and career goals, and the faculty encouraged utilizing advisor support to ensure financial aid applicability and course alignment with future university programs. The session concluded with a call for questions and an invitation to future workshops.

Highlights

The AA and AS degrees are primarily for students planning to transfer to a four-year university. 🎓
Cultural competence is a crucial requirement, helping students thrive in diverse environments. 🌍
The digital literacy course develops essential skills for modern, tech-savvy professions. 💻
Taking the college success requirement early ensures students are set on the right track. 🚀
It's important to align courses with financial aid requirements to avoid unexpected expenses. 💸

Key Takeaways

The AA and AS degrees are designed for easy transfer to a four-year university. 🎓
Both degrees require 60 credit hours, including a general education core, electives, and specific course requirements. 📚
Cultural competence and digital literacy courses are essential components of these degrees. 🌍
Students are encouraged to work closely with advisors to ensure course alignment with career goals. 👥
Successful completion of the general education core leads to becoming 'Gen Ed certified'. ✅

Overview

The workshop opened with an introduction to the Associate in Arts (AA) and Associate in Science (AS) degrees, focusing on their role as stepping stones to four-year universities. These two-year degrees are structured with a general education core, additional credit hours beyond the core, and a selection of electives. The presentation emphasized how these components coexist to form a robust foundational academic experience.

Cultural competence and digital literacy emerged as pivotal parts of the AA and AS degree plans. Cultural courses prepare students for diverse global landscapes, while digital literacy classes ensure students are proficient in essential technological skills. Students must strategically select courses to meet these requirements accurately and benefit fully from their education - with the help of advisors for optimal educational alignment.

To wrap up, the speaker highlighted the significance of confirming that all chosen classes align with financial aid stipulations, reminding students that only applicable courses are funded by financial aid. This crucial guidance aims to prevent potential financial pitfalls. The session wrapped up with an encouragement for students to actively engage with advisors and a reminder about upcoming workshops.

AA AS Learning Community Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 hello everyone and welcome to another success Workshop Series today our Workshop series is about the associate in arts and associate in science learning community and this is more or less a group advising session to learn about the AA and AS degree the components of these degrees and what you can do with these degrese so with that said let's get started so what is the AA and
00:30 - 01:00 AS these are degrees associate degrees two-year degrees that are meant or intended for transfer to a four-year University the components of the AA / AS include three main areas you have the general education core which make up 33 credit hours you have hours beyond the core which are six credit
01:00 - 01:30 hours and then you have electives of 21 credit hours however of that 21 credit hour six hours are used with the digital literacy and college success course requirement giving a total of 60 credit hours for each of the AA and the AS degrees One requirement in the AA and AS degree include cultural competence this is a requirement that prepares students to live in diverse and domestic
01:30 - 02:00 International environments and these courses encourage students to use critical thinking skills to develop an understanding of diversity equity and inclusion some of the courses that we have in this category on the schedule in Spring 2024 include GEO 172 HUM 202 REL 130
02:00 - 02:30 Spanish 101 and Spanish 115 these courses also count as other general education categories so for example the GEO 172 and REL 130 also count for your social Behavioral Science requirement and Spanish would count as your Humanities or foreign language require requirement which we don't have just a specific foreign language but it does count in your Gen Ed category and so for the
02:30 - 03:00 completion of the AA / AS degree students must have at least one cultural competence course to meet the requirement for the AAS AA and AS degree there is also additional literacy requirement that I mentioned earlier this is counted as an elective and KCTCS defines digital literacy as the ability to locate evaluate and ethically create and share information using visual technologies to enhance
03:00 - 03:30 one's quality of life and vocation and some of the courses in this requirement include CAD 100 most students take CIT 105 but you can also take DLC 100 if you're in sonography EMS 119 counts EDU 204 and VCC 125 there are other courses on this list but they are not required here at HCTC with the programs that we have also if you're in the nursing program across nursing the completion
03:30 - 04:00 of the nursing program meets the requirement for digital literacy you also have another requirement which is called the college success requirement and this is also counted in your elective as an elective course this course promotes college completion by providing an in-depth experience that help students learn a model for decision making of life-defining choices students learn to use available resources to develop knowledge skills and attitudes to promote success now some
04:00 - 04:30 of the courses that are used in this category are primarily FYE 105 and on occasion we do have FYE 100 that is offered in it also counts but both of these courses should be taken in your first semester so if you're listening to this and you're in your first semester and you're not enrolled in this class you do need to enroll in this class next semester so please make sure when you're
04:30 - 05:00 meeting with your advisor that you're um signing up for this course requirement you cannot graduate without the AA or AS um the AA or AS degree without taking a college success requirement now let's look a little deeper into each of the three areas of the AA and AS as I mentioned before you have the general education core that makes up 33 credit hours you can see the requirements on the left-hand side of written communication which is six credit hours in both the AA and AS or and
05:00 - 05:30 those courses include English 101 and English 102 you have oral communications which is a 3 credit hour requirement for both the AA and AS and this includes courses such as COM 181 or COM 252 we have an Arts and Humanities requirement of six credit hours in both the AA and the AS and that includes courses such as ART 100 MUS 100 any HUM class then you also have a quantitative
05:30 - 06:00 reasoning requirement for the AA it's only three credit hours and in the associate of science it's a six credit hour requirement so make sure you notice the difference there and with um the AA the quantitative reasoning to be math [MAT] 146 that is a class that we typically see a lot of students take if they are an AA major we also see students take that class for nursing because that
06:00 - 06:30 is an acceptable math class for nursing in the associate of science for the six credit hours you do have to take a second math class then we move on to Natural Sciences you must have one with a lab so for the AA it's a three credit hour requirement but technically when you're taking the science with the lab you end up with four credit hours and that would just be an hour carryover down into your either Beyond core or to your elective sec sec section excuse me and then
06:30 - 07:00 for the associate in science the Natural Sciences requirement is six credit hours and yes one of them also include one with the lab and examples of that might be biology 112 with 113 lab biology 137 which is human anatomy and physiology which has the lab integrated you may also have a chemistry class lecture with the lab physics geology there's a variety of different courses that you can take
07:00 - 07:30 to meet this requirement the next section is the social behavoiral sciences and here you take two different um classes they have to come from two different disciplines um and different from the Arts and Humanities course that you take so for the AA the requirement is nine credit hours and that's typically three classes and for the AS that is six credit hours to give you an example of how two disciplines would be different typically we see a lot of students take PSY 110 which
07:30 - 08:00 is introduction to psychology and the SOC 101 which is introduction to sociology so with PSY 110 and SOC 101 we have two different disciplines um being represented um we typically um also see students that really like psychology so they try to take for example if they're an AA student they try to take three psych classes well won't work here you have to make sure you have two different
08:00 - 08:30 disciplines represented either in whether you're in AA or AS and then the last category for this block is the quantitative reasoning or natural sciences so that means you need to take another math class or another natural science class so you get to pick so for the AA the requirement is a three credit hour requirement whereas for the associate in science there is no requirement zero so you would have to take an extra one because you're already taking the extra class above um
08:30 - 09:00 as required there's an extra math and science as you can see listed above in comparison to the AA this in total gives you 33 credit hours for the general education core so now as we move on to be the hours beyond the core this is six credit hours so if you're um in the associate of science and actually I noticed a little um snafu here for the AA it is six hours whereas it should be zero for
09:00 - 09:30 the AS so what I'm going to do is actually correct this on the spot so I can make sure that you're seeing the correct information so it should be zero for um the AS degree beyond the core so for AA beyond the core you have to take six additional credit hours in arts and humanities social
09:30 - 10:00 behavioral sciences oral communications and or foreign language and so you see for associate in science on that line that's zero credits because the core for the AS must be in quantitative reasoning and or natural sciences so in the line below you'll see zero credit hours for the AA and six credit hours for the associate in science which in total is six credit hours additional for the core whether you're in the AA or the AS program if you are double majoring in both the
10:00 - 10:30 AA and the AS you would have an additional six credit hours here um in beyond the core and then the last section of the AA and AS degree are the elective section which you have to have 21 credit hours of electives six hours of courses required as I mentioned earlier for the college
10:30 - 11:00 success and the digital literacy and that gives you remaining 15 credit hours to use with other courses we usually suggest using those 15 credit hours to fulfill any pre major requirements so as you can see here for AA and AS you need a college success course at three credit hours typically as I've mentioned that's FYE 105 we have on occasion taught the FYE 100 which is only a one credit hour
11:00 - 11:30 course which would actually allow you to take a an extra class in this section for electives and as mentioned you really need to take this FYE 105 or the FYE 100 in your first semester a lot of times you'll see the FYE 100 when we do our FAST bridge program during the summer in the month of July which is a week long um session for that class and we also build in orientation and then the
11:30 - 12:00 other requirement that is required as an elective is your digital literacy requirement and that is three credit hours again for both the AA and the AS and then that leaves you the remaining hours as electives and as I said you might want to take that for um fulfilling any pre-major requirements that you're interested in and as I emphasize the AA and the AS is a transfer program so it you're in these programs the thought is that you will be going to a four-year University in some
12:00 - 12:30 major so now when we go on and we're talking about the possible elective considerations as I said you would have at least 15 credit hours you can actually earn a short-term certificate that we may offer here at HCTC within that 15 credit hour of your electives so these are just some examples
12:30 - 13:00 that HCTC offers that you may also be interested in so you could take a variety of different IT certifications that we have under our CIT program we have Machine Tool certificate that is short-term the phlebotomist certificates are short term there is some heavy equipment certificates that are worth 10 credit hours such as bulldozer um we also have direct support work under Human Services we have child care assistant and provider under our um early childhood education program we
13:00 - 13:30 have a drone operator course we have a variety of digital photography design assistant mixed media and I didn't put it on this list but we also have some students that will go ahead and take for example medical terminology and nurse aid if they are interested in an Allied Health field such as nursing some other possibilities and considerations to think about is if you
13:30 - 14:00 are going to transfer into a um pre-professional medical um degree um you can take a lot of courses towards biomedical we also have um Pharmacy and MLS with UK and I'll put a plug here we do have a University Center of the Mountains on our Hazard campus that is available for students and we have several four-year partners within the University Center of the Mountains
14:00 - 14:30 that allow you to stay here in the mountains and get your bachelor's um Master's or even doctorate degree we have a variety of different partners and degree options um and we do see a lot of that we do the biomedical and Pharmacy MLS is a program that's actually right here with the UK um by the ARH hospital and you actually can get your AS with us and then
14:30 - 15:00 apply for the MLS programming be done in 18 months and then be working you know so it's a short-term bachelor degree that we work with UK on also we have a lot of students that are in these majors that are interested in selective admissions programs such as nursing sonography radiography surg tech I didn't put that on there but we also have surgical technology and so a lot of students try to fulfill the prerequisites for those programs
15:00 - 15:30 and then apply to the nursing um as I said the related selective admissions programs that we have now when you are completing your AS and AA requirements and you're getting you know ready for transfer that first block that I mentioned earlier of the 33 credit hours when you complete that when you successfully complete the courses in that block you will be what is called fully
15:30 - 16:00 Gen Ed certified and that means that when you transfer these hours go all together as a block to the four-year University meaning they take them in total um across the degree and of course when you finish your AA and AS that also will go to most of your I mean well to the public um 4 years and then there's something that's called program applicability that you may or may not have heard of but if you're receiving financial aid um that Aid will only pay for the classes
16:00 - 16:30 that apply to your major and of course if you're in courses that are not in your major your aid may be adjusted accordingly so that means you may have to pay out of pocket for courses that are not relatable or applicable to your program and I do have a short video that I want to show here that talks about that give you a better idea make the most of your financial aid did you know
16:30 - 17:00 federal financial aid only pays for classes that are required for your program of study are you in the right classes say your program of study is Health Information Technology the job market is booming for health careers and it's time to register for next semester first visit your student self-service account here you can make sure health information is your declared program of study if you're already registered you can also view your schedule here medical terminology check clinical systems check software integration check
17:00 - 17:30 wait you really want to take that brake systems class so you can work on your own car that does sound like a great class and super useful but you might want to tap the brakes if you need federal financial aid to pay for it these guidelines were put in place to help students stay focused on your program graduate faster lower the cost of your education if you're not able to pay for the class yourself maybe you can take that break system class at another time does this all seem a bit confusing make an appointment with your adviser they can help you
17:30 - 18:00 make the most of your financial aid and keep you on track to graduate you're going to do great so that gives you a little bit of an example of how the program applicability works and how you want to make sure that you're looking at the correct courses for oops out so it's going to another video hold on just a
18:00 - 18:30 second sorry about that back on the right slide here so um just to summarize the program applicability just really important for you to work with your advisor make sure you're looking at the catalog you're in the correct major I know that I have had advises um double major which would allow them to take a couple of extra courses and that might be something to consider
18:30 - 19:00 depending on your path as far as a career that you want to do in the courses that you need okay so which classes should I register for and these are just some general um tips to keep in mind when you're thinking about about registering for next semester so as I've mentioned I think
19:00 - 19:30 throughout this presentation please make sure you get with your advisory you want to discuss your academic career goals to make sure that the courses you're taking are um appropriate courses and that you're in an appropriate major for what you want to do in life so when you get done with college you are going to want a job that you like so you want to make sure that in that career path of whatever that is for you so make sure you're working with your advisor there is an option
19:30 - 20:00 in your student self-service to run the academic requirement report and that allows you to see what courses you need to complete your major and again if you're not sure where that is at your advisor can assist and then we also have um you know the student services tile in MyPath and that's where you can go look at a variety of information in your student center you can as I mentioned look
20:00 - 20:30 at the academic report you can review any to-dos or messages you could also look at advising notes and that allows you to see any notes that may have been placed on your account that may also include a graduation plan of the courses that are required for the major that you're in and um making sure your address you know your phone number all those things are up to date looking at your schedule looking at financial aid there are a lot of different things in your student self-services
20:30 - 21:00 tile and if you are planning on transferring we want to make sure we connect you with a transfer advisor and really when I say that I'm talking about our University Center of the Mountains because you want to learn about the specific program requirements at the transfer school so in your first semester this is your first semester and let's say for example you know that you want to train transfer we'll say to Morehead State University and get your bachelor's degree in
21:00 - 21:30 teaching or education we want to make sure that we're connecting you to a person in the University Center of the Mountains that can make sure that for Morehead you're taking the appropriate social Behavioral Science courses or you're taking the appropriate um natural science courses and so forth so it's really important that you get connected earlier versus later so that way again we don't want you to waste not one credit hour on what your intended major is and what those program
21:30 - 22:00 requirements is for that major and I do have one other short video I promise to show you um let me is what is a home warranty it's a one-year service plan that helps cover costs
22:00 - 22:30 make the most of your financial aid did you know federal financial aid only pays for classes that are required for your program of study connected to the same are you in the right class I apologize for that I had a different one there but in any case um we will go on and actually I'm at the end of my presentation so if you have any questions you can feel free to turn your mic on now or post them in the chat otherwise it has been great being here with you today
22:30 - 23:00 to talk about the AA and AS degree and the flexibility of that degree depending on what your intended program major or your ultimately the end of what your your career is going to be right I do not hear or see any questions so I thank you for attending
23:00 - 23:30 the session today and please join us again for a future um success workshop