PSu Magazine Winter 2002

but it provide fodder for the neces ary planning and allow administrator to sleep at night. The truth is, going to college is not the idyllic sojourn it used to be. Whether they are the cra– ditional returning students upon which PSU has built its con i<lerable regional reputation, or the new group of younger students who are looking for an urban educational environment, they come to school these days with more worrie , financial responsibilities, and worldly commitments than in the past. "We see more and more students who are working full time and going to school full time," ay Dan Fortmiller, director of the Information and Acad– emic Support Center. "We used to say, 'Wait until you get out into the real world,' but our student are already in the real world." I t is the expanded job of adviser to help students cope with the load. "Everyone has a pace at which they can be successful," says Robert Mercer, enior academic adviser for the Col– lege of Liberal Arts and Sciences. " o a lot of times it's not just a matter of counting credits, but trying to figure out what it's going to co t, how long it's going to take, and what ort of resources will help along the way." This is particularly true for transfer students. Dan Fliffen is one of 1,500 tran fer tudents who entered P U this fall. He's been studying math for six years part time, first at Clackamas Community College, where he earned his Oregon transfer degree, then at Western Oregon, and now at PSU. He is currently taking JOO-level course . "I'm going here basically b cause I can live with my parents while I go full time," he says. "It's cheaper and it's really convenient." Mary Kinnick, professor of educa– tion, has been studying community college students who come to P U since 1991. he ays Fliffen' experi– ence is repeated in thousand of tu– dents who find their way to P U, although she's quick to point out that not all transfer students are alike in either need or trajectory. "PSU gets huge numbers of tran fer students every year, and our study looked at the way these student use the two different types of institutions," she says. "The surpri e i that the group we call our true linear transfer students, those who go from commu– nity college to PSU, made up only about one-third of the transfer stu– dents here. There is a big assumption that the linear transfer group is actu– ally 100 percent of the transfer tu– dents, but it ju t isn't o." The remaining 68 percent, like Flif– fen, develop their own patterns, and that poses challenges for educators and advisers to find way to reach out to these students and help them meet their educational goals. "The tati tics tell you something about our students," says Kinnick. "They are more mobile than we've given them credit for. They are also incredibly per i tent. The average time to get a degree for a student who uses both the community college and the university system is 9-1/2 years. They may have always thought of them– selve as a higher education student, they just haven't been able to attend for three year ." Vaunger student are also attending f ~PSU in droves. This year 1,055 fir t-time freshmen began their studies at PSU, up by 13 percent from last year, which was also con idered a stel– lar year for enrollment numbers. "We really have seen an increa e in 18- and 19-year-old tudent ," says Mercer. "It's a wonderful addition to the mo aic of our student population. I was talking the other day to a young woman who got her undergraduate degree from Reed. She's taking some courses to meet the prerequi ires for the Graduate School of Education. She said you couldn't have the kind of clas room conversation at Reed that you can have here at PSU. At this WINTER 2002 PSU MAGAZINE 13