February 2, 1995: Vol26n15: PERSONALITIES:  Making strides in transfer

By STEVE COX
Reporter Staff
Jennifer Gottdiener brought her articulation skills to UB in
October. Hers are not the type of articulatory abilities, however,
that one would hone under Professor Henry Higgins.
	As UB's new Transfer and Articulation Coordinator, Gottdiener
has the task of smoothing student transitions from two-year, or other
four-year, institutions to UB and improving communications between
major fields of study here and their counterparts at other area
schools. She is the first person to hold this post on a full-time
basis, and brings plenty of experience with her from the University of
California at Riverside.
	"In a very broad sense, articulation helps institutions of
higher education understand each other," explained Gottdiener. Course
articulation, she explained, enables students to take courses in the
same subject at area institutions, confident that the credits will be
accepted by UB toward the student's degree. Faculty articulation
encourages the departmental faculty of community colleges in the area,
for example, to reach agreement with UB faculty on what courses or
special requirements are needed by students from the two-year level
toward a four-year degree. 
	Most students at UB have at least some transfer credits,
Gottdiener said, and students who transfer from other institutions
comprise a large part of the student body. Last fall, 2,224 first-time
freshmen were enrolled, and 1,553 students transfered to the
university as well.
	Computerized articulation information, development of new
articulation agreements between institutions and expanded joint
admission agreements are among the tools Gottdiener plans to use to
make UB more transfer-friendly.
	Since 1991, development of a master database for articulation
information, in conjunction with the DARS system, has been under
way. "Very soon, this should enable students with transfer credits to
audit their progress toward degree requirements very easily," said
Gottdiener.
	Articulation and joint admission agreements, Gottdiener
explained, enable students at other institutions who are considering
transfer to a program at UB to better ascertain which classes they
will need and what academic standards they need to maintain to gain
admission to the department of their choice. "In some traditional
fields, like chemistry or physics, the requirements are pretty
standard," said Gottdiener, "but in others, like computer science,
things are constantly changing." 
	While articulation agreements are basically just informative,
Gottdiener says, joint admission programs actually guarantee the
student transfer admission to UB at a point in the future, provided
that student maintains the academic expectations laid out in the
agreement.
	 The best laid plans, however, are only as effective as the
distribution system for the information on other campuses, Gottdiener
says. "It is important to communicate to students in community
colleges and elsewhere what is required of them to gain admitance to
the department of their choice here," she said."
	Compared to the California system she just left, Gottdiener
sees plenty of room for growth here. "California is a much more
centralized system, so articulation is considerably more developed
there," she explained. Since 1988, Gottdiener had worked in the
articulation and admissions offices at Riverside.
ast year, she co-chaired the
	California Intersegmental Articulation Council, a body that
designs coordinated basic curriculums for all state institutions. Only
a year earlier, her work in the field of articulation earned her the
Educator of the Year Award from the Inland Consortium for Articulation
and Transfer.
	While much of her work is with area colleges, such as the
community colleges in Erie, Niagara or Monroe counties, Gottdiener
says a surprisingly large contingent of transfer students come from
Nassau and Suffolk counties. The number of area private colleges that
supply transfer students also impressed Gottdiener.
	"California has a very large state system," she said, "but
there are very few private colleges. Within a 50-mile radius of the
Riverside campus, there were at least 25 state community colleges, as
opposed to eight or nine here." She said most students in California
start their education at a community college. Many students commute
between two or three colleges to get the courses they want, so
articulation becomes extremely important to them.
	Gottdiener and her husband, Mark Gottdiener, the new chair of
the UB Sociology Department, arrived in Buffalo last August. But
leaving sunny California after 14 years wasn't as difficult as it
might seem for the Minneapolis-born, Brooklyn-bred Gottdiener.
	 "It was kind of like coming home," she said. "We enjoy winter
sports, like cross-country skiing, and I really don't think it's very
cold here."