ETI: Night School For Entrepreneurs
Taking the Angst Out of College Transfer
Corrections or additions?
These articles by Kathleen McGinn Spring & Barbara Fox were prepared for the August 13, 2003 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Fast 50 Honors
Six Princeton area companies that made this year’s New
Jersey Technology Fast 50 list will be honored at a breakfast on Thursday,
August 14, at 7:30 a.m. at the Woodbridge Sheraton. The ranking covered
the years from 1998 to 2002. “Rising Star” awards went to
four more companies, and Research Park-based Restricted Stock Systems
was among them.
U.S. Senator Jon Corzine will be the keynote speaker and the
top winner will be announced. For information on the breakfast, call
Chris Cook at 973-683-7335.
Companies to be honored:
Epam Systems, 29 Emmons Drive, Suite C-10, Princeton08540. 609-452-1701; fax, 609-452-1704. E-mail: info@epam.comHomepage: www.epam.com.Computer consulting for PCs.ITXC Corp. (ITXC), 750 College Road East, , Princeton08540. Tom Evslin, chairman and CEO. 609-750-3333; fax, 609-419-1511.Home page: www.itxc.com.Global wholesale telecom carrier — voice over IP.Medarex Inc. (MEDX), 707 State Road, Princeton08540. Donald L. Drakeman, president and CEO. 609-430-2880; fax, 609-430-2850.E-mail: information@medarex.comHome page: www.medarex.com.Biopharmaceutical developing monoclonal antibody-basedtherapeutics for cancer, inflammation, autoimmune, and infectius diseases,with the UltiMAb Human Antibody Development System, with a multi-productPhase III manufacturing laboratory in Annandale.Orchid BioSciences Inc. (ORCH), 4390 Route 1 North,Princeton 08543. Paul J. Kelly MD, CEO. 609-750-2200; fax, 609-750-6400.Home page: www.orchid.com,Services and products for profiling genetic uniqueness— forensic and paternity DNA testing, pharmacogentics-based personalizedhealthcare, and public health genotyping services.Princeton eCom Corporation, 650 College Road East,Princeton 08540. Craig Kirsch, CEO. 609-606-3000; fax, 609-606-3297.Home page: www.princetonecom.comRemote banking, processing electronic payments for bankclients, 800-PAY-BILLSimStar Internet Solutions, 202 Carnegie Center,Princeton 08540. David Reim, CEO. 609-378-0100; fax, 609-378-0220.E-mail: info@simstar.comHome page: www.simstar.comStrategy, development, and servicing of E-business solutionsfor the pharmaceutical industry.Restricted Stock Systems Inc., 412 Wall Street,Princeton 08540. Greg Besner, CEO. 609-430-7400; fax, 609-430-7500.E-mail: joe@rssgroup.comHome page: www.rssgroup.comSoftware applications that automate restricted stockequity transactions, licensed to financial services organizationsand public organizations.Top Of PageETI: Night School For EntrepreneursSponsored by the New Jersey Economic Development Authority,the Entrepreneurial Training Institute has graduated 788 fledglingentrepreneurs since 1992, and has helped them to obtain a total of$8,794,385 in start-up financing. Its core curriculum covers practicaltopics of business planning, goal setting, and how to make decisionsabout financing and marketing. Each session is highly structured andincludes peer networking, lectures, and discussions about homeworkas it pertains to the individual’s creation of a business plan. (Seepage 8)A free information session takes place on Tuesday, August 19, at 6p.m. at the Lawrence branch of the Mercer County Public Library. (Call609-292-9279 to reserve a seat or to find out more about the program.)Classes begin in Trenton on Thursday, September 18. Other locationsin the state begin at around the same time, on dates that fall betweenMonday, September 15 and Wednesday, September 24.Students receive feedback from a panel of small business professionals,accountants, lenders, and lawyers. Those who seek financing presenttheir business plans to a roundtable of some 40 lenders representingall types of funding.Classes are generally in the evening from 6 to 9 p.m. for eight weeks.Locations in central New Jersey include Trenton and Somerville. Thereis also a Newark location, which could work for commuters on theirway home from Manhattan. Other locations are Atlantic City, the siteof the only daytime class, Jersey City, Lakewood, Mt. Laurel, Plainfield,Vineland, and West Paterson. The cost of the program is $295.In adddition to the standard ETI program, there are separate programsfor non-profits, for the high tech industry, and for Spanish speakingstudents.Top Of PageTaking the Angst Out of College TransferIt’s great if you can pack a steamer truck and headto Harvard, but most students are being priced out of higher education.”This comment comes from Hollie Gilroy, director of communicationsfor the Healthcare Institute of New Jersey. Gilroy, a graduate ofRutgers (Class of 1985) who holds a master’s degree from Seton Hall,began her education at Middlesex County College.”I was in a predicament,” she recounts. “I was jugglinga job to pay for my education and my upkeep, and really, communitycollege is the most sensitive institution in higher education in meetingstudent needs.” So, while holding down a job at the Courier News,Gilroy spent two years at Middlesex earning an associate degree beforewinning a scholarship to Rutgers, which accepted all of the creditsshe had accrued. “I was accepted as a full junior,” she says.”I graduated in two years.”Her experience was not unusual, says Gilroy, whose resume includesa number of years of lobbying experience, some of it for the state’scommunity colleges. “Lots of people do it!” she exclaims.Using the state’s community colleges can be a good move, even forthose who don’t need to count pennies. Yes, at an average of $2,310a year, the education is an almost unbelievable bargain, coming inat about 10 percent of the cost of many a four-year school. But thereare other advantages as well.Community college teachers tend to be focused on teaching, ratherthan research projects, Gilroy points out. And she found that thecommunity college learning culture favored hands-on education. Thisapproach, she says, put her ahead of her classmates when she transferredto Rutgers. She had already become good at applying what she learnedin her communications classes, both at the Courier News and at thecommunity college newspaper.There is no question that a motivated student can cut college expensesin half by starting out at a community college — and can do sowithout putting a four-year degree in jeopardy. Yet a stigma againstthe schools persists.Nancy Hazelgrove, director of the New Jersey Statewide TransferInitiative, thinks she knows why. “When they opened their doorsin the ’60s,” she explains, “community colleges had an opendoor policy. Some people had a bias. They thought, well, if anybodycan get in…” Another problem has been that it was difficultfor students with a four-year degree in their plans to turn communitycollege into a stepping stone. There was little articulation betweenthe two-year schools and the schools to which their students wantedto transfer. Any number of would-be transfers found themselves witha sack full of credits that did not count toward a four-year degree.While the nebulous anti-community college bias dies hard, the practicalproblem of a smooth transfer is all but solved. NJ Transfer, the shortname for the state initiative of which Hazelgrove is director, isclosing in on a computerized system that makes it easy for communitycollege students to take the classes that will get them into the four-yearschool of their choice.Online at www.njtransfer.org, the state is using software called ARTSYSto let community college students easily plan a class schedule thatleads them to a seamless transition to a four-year school. After apilot test by Rutgers, the majority of the state’s colleges are hookedinto the system, and most are finished with the time-consuming taskof evaluating courses at some or all 19 of the state’s community colleges.Hazelgrove explains that some four-year colleges receive 80 percentor more of their transfers from just a few two-year schools, and thereforehave just evaluated courses at those schools. Other four-year institutions,Princeton University among them, accept so few community college graduatesthat they have not hooked into the NJ Transfer system.Among New Jersey four-year schools that are participating are Rider,Rutgers, the College of New Jersey, Fairleigh Dickinson, DeVry, andthe University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.NJ Transfer’s website takes students by the hand and leads them, step-by-step,through a process of determining exactly what course at a four-yearschool is the exact equivalent of a course at their community college.Students look at their course catalogs and type a course number, perhapsEng101, into NJ Transfer, and instantly see which four-year schoolswill accept credits for that course, and under what terms.Results for English 101 at MCCC show that the course is not transferableto Georgian Court College, is transferable to Fairleigh Dickinsonor Rider if the student earns a C, and is transferable to MontclairState if the student earns a C-. At Fairleigh Dickinson, Madison,the MCCC course is equivalent to Freshman Writing Workshop 1, andat Fairleigh Dickinson, Teaneck, it is equivalent to English Composition1.This search reveals that the course has not yet been evaluated bya number of colleges, but that they are working on it. Hazelgrovesays that NJ Transfer has not yet begun a marketing campaign becauseit wanted to wait until most of the evaluation were complete. Thatday is approaching, she says, and marketing will most likely beginthis year.Hazelgrove, who has served as director of admissions at a number ofcolleges, including Georgian Court, has headed up NJ Transfer sinceit was created early in 2001. She emphasizes that the initiative’swebsite is a tool — but not a guarantee. The fact that a student’sclasses are accepted by a particular institution does not mean thathe himself will be accepted there. That said, Hazelgrove says thatmost New Jersey colleges are very receptive to transfers from communitycolleges. Some colleges have articulation agreements that do guaranteeadmissions to community college students with an average of at least2.0 who have taken courses that conform to their curricula. Transferstudents generally become full juniors at their new schools.Some colleges, however, have a few majors that are so popular thatit is hard to transfer into them. Others, and Hazelgrove uses theCollege of New Jersey as an example, put such a high premium on studentretention that they may have few slots in any major for a junior yeartransfer.In a comprehensive guide to transferring on its website (www.mccc.com),MCCC advises its students whose aim is a four-year degree to startplanning for a transfer from day one. NJ Transfer, which is modeledon a program used by the University of Maryland for some 15 years,makes this planning a whole lot easier than it ever has been.Both Gilroy and Hazelgrove say that community college as a first highered experience may be an idea whose time has come.”The whole college paradigm has shifted,” observes Gilroy.The traditional college experience, built around dorm life, is givingway as more and more students choose to commute from home or froman off-campus apartment. At the same time, says Hazelgrove, quotinga study by the American College Testing Program (ACT), the drop-outrate between freshman and sophomore year at four-year colleges issoaring — to about 25 percent. Meanwhile, graduation rates areplummeting. Only 44.6 percent of freshman at public colleges progressthrough all four years and graduate. The figure for private collegesis 57 percent.Hazelgrove believes that the distractions of life at a four-year schoolcontributes to the drop out rate. At community colleges, she pointsout, students typically live at home, and often use their spare timeto hold down a job.Another factor could be pressure from guidance counselors, parents,and peers to gain acceptance to the most elite school possible. Whilemany students thrive on the pressure, others are pushed onto a paththey do not want, or are unprepared to travel. Two years in a communitycollege could be a good way to sort out options and test aptitudes.Those who become confident that higher education is for them, andwho go on to transfer, will save a substantial sum of money.”Community college is what America’s all about,” says Gilroy,a professional who recently had no trouble landing a good new jobin a horrible economy. “It takes the snobbery out of education,letting people learn when they are ready. It’s a thing you find nowhereelse but in America.”Corrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
