For immediate release — April 12, 2007

(DALLAS) — Officials with the Dallas County Community College District and Langston University (Okla.) have signed an agreement that enables DCCCD students to finish their associate degrees and then transfer seamlessly to Langston University to pursue their bachelor’s degrees — giving them yet another option to continue their careers in higher education. Langston is Oklahoma’s only historically black university. 

Representatives — including Dr. Wright Lassiter, DCCCD’s chancellor, and Dr. JoAnn Haysbert, president of Langston University — participated in a signing ceremony on Wednesday, April 11, at 10 a.m. at DCCCD’s downtown office. Other officials from both institutions also attended.

“DCCCD welcomes another new partner with us in higher education so that we can offer our students more options for their educational and professional growth,” said Lassiter. “We look forward to the additional opportunities that this agreement will provide.”

“We also welcome DCCCD students to Langston’s family, and we look forward to working with them as they pursue their bachelor’s degrees,” said Haysbert.

Langston has three locations: its main campus in the city of Langston, plus upper-division urban learning centers in Tulsa and Oklahoma City. The institution was established in 1897 as a land grant college named the Colored Agricultural and Normal University. The following year, the school was opened in a Presbyterian church with an initial budget of $5,000, led by its first president, Dr. Inman E. Page, the son of a former slave who had purchased freedom for himself and his family. Haysbert became the institution’s 15th president in 2005.

“The purpose of the DCCCD/Langston University agreement is to enable the district’s students to transfer to Langston and carry with them the credits they already have earned for as much relevant study as possible,” said Gregory Williams, DCCCD’s director of transfer services/articulation and university relations. “Courses taken at any DCCCD college are considered equally transferable.”

All DCCCD associate degrees — Associate in Arts, Associate of Arts in Teaching, Associate in Applied Sciences and Associate in Sciences — transfer to Langston as a block; completed blocks are treated as a whole, and the components are not examined separately to determine transferability. DCCCD graduates will not have to repeat lower-division requirements at LU, and DCCCD graduates who have a minimum 2.0 grade point average are guaranteed admission to the university under the new agreement.

Additionally, DCCCD graduates who complete the district’s 48-hour Core Curriculum will see those credits transfer as a block, which will satisfy the lower-division general education requirements at Langston. The Core Curriculum will be transferred from DCCCD and accepted as a component of an associate degree or a stand-alone general education block not affiliated with an associate degree.

The DCCCD/Langston University agreement also includes other stipulations; for more information, contact Williams at (214) 860-2185.

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Press contact: Ann Hatch, 214-860-2478