Laurie Evans shares her story about transferring to ASU

Laurie Evans is a great example of a mobile student who has taken many courses in lots of different areas of study at a good number of institutions. “I have taken courses on everything from nursing to computer programming, always uncertain about what to become when I grew up,” she says. “Transferring credits became a rather sizeable and burdensome task.”

After graduating from high school in 1987, she attended the University of Arizona with aspirations to become an architect, but she dropped out during her second semester. Life took over. She got married, gave birth to a son, and became a stay-at-home mom. Her marriage ended in a divorce and her being responsible for child support. “I was forced to work full- time because I had child-support obligations,” she says. “Otherwise I would have finished school a long time ago.”

Over the years Evans lived in Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, and Arizona. She completed a wide variety of courses on a part-time basis at Truman College in Chicago and at Indian Hills Community College, Grand View University, and Des Moines Community College in Iowa. She moved back to Arizona in 2007, returned to school after a 7-year hiatus from higher education, and graduated in 2010 with an Associate in Arts degree. She had completed both traditional and online courses at Mesa Community College, Scottsdale Community College and Rio Salado College, all in the Maricopa County Community College system, where transfer of credit within the system is not a complicated process. “It’s pretty neat how the Maricopa system is set up,” she says. “You can go to ten different community colleges and it all matriculates. I was thrilled to be able to take my registration from one school to another without any difficulty.”
In January 2011, Evans enrolled in Arizona State University’s (ASU) fully online BS in Sociology program. Over what she calls “my very long-term college journey,” Evans accumulated 126 credits, 64 of which were transferred into the ASU program. She also had to repeat some courses. For example, an Anatomy and Physiology course that she took at Des Moines Community College in the 1990s was not recognized for her general education requirements.
Evans is currently on track to graduate from ASU in the spring 2012 semester, and she has plans to attend ASU’s School of Public Affairs to ultimately earn a Master of Public Policy.

Student profiles courtesy of George Lorenzo, (Oct. 9. 2011). Eight Transfer Student Success Stories in Progress. The SOURCE on Community College Issues, Trends & Strategies.