UNLV has launched a new program designed to ease the transfer process for Community College of Southern Nevada students who want to move on to UNLV.

The key to the program is a one-page contract which guarantees a student will be able to transfer his CCSN credits to UNLV if he abides by the document.

"What we want to do is to make it as easy as possible for a student to transfer from CCSN to UNLV," said Patricia Zozaya, coordinator of UNLV's new Transfer Center. "The contracts do that by making it crystal clear what each participating student must do to be assured of transferring his or her credits to UNLV. If a student abides by the terms of the contract, transferring credits will not be a problem."

Jeffrey Halverson, UNLV's dean of admissions and records, said, "In the past, the transfer process sometimes has proved problematic. Some students have been confused about which credits will transfer and which ones will not, and on occasion that has led to unhappy situations. We believe the Transfer Center will go a long way toward avoiding those sorts of problems in the future."

To be eligible to sign a UNLV contract, a CCSN student must:

* Have fewer than 30 transferable credits at the time he signs the contract.
* Abide by the curriculum sheet that is part of the contract.
* Obtain the grade point average required by the UNLV college offering the degree the student is seeking.
* Transfer within the time allotted in the contract. Students having zero to 15 credits at the time the contract is signed have five years to transfer. Students having 16-29 credits have four years to transfer.

"One of the great things about the contracts as far as the students are concerned is that once they sign the contract, they have locked in their graduation requirements and know exactly what is expected of them," Zozaya said. "If one of our programs changes its graduation requirements after that, the student still operates under the requirements that were in effect at the time the contract was signed."

If a student decides to change majors after a contract has been signed, he is free to do that, Zozaya said. The contract simply becomes void. If that student still has fewer than 30 transferable credits, he can choose to sign another contract for his new major.

To develop the contracts, Zozaya undertook a painstaking process of researching the UNLV curriculum and then comparing the courses offered at UNLV for each bachelor's degree to the course offerings at CCSN.

The result is a one-page contract for each bachelor's degree program offered by UNLV that clearly states which CCSN courses will be transferable and applicable to that degree.

The contracts, which have been available on a limited basis since April, have attracted 93 CCSN students so far.

Contracts now are available for all of UNLV's undergraduate degree programs.

Zozaya, who can be reached at 895-0892, is available to meet with CCSN students who have questions about the contracts.

She said the curriculum sheets she developed for each undergraduate major at UNLV may prove useful even to students who do not sign contracts because the documents succinctly state the course requirements for each program.

The UNLV Transfer Center is the result of a mandate by the University and Community College System of Nevada Board of Regents, Zozaya said, explaining that the board directed both of the state's universities to develop programs that would smooth the transfer process for community college students around the state.

Now that UNLV has a process in place for CCSN students, Zozaya has begun the task of expanding the program to include the state's other community colleges. CCSN was done first because the majority of community college students transferring to UNLV come from CCSN.

Once she has completed the contracts for Nevada's other community colleges, Zozaya will begin working on contracts for community colleges in nearby states that frequently send students on to UNLV.

For additional information on the Transfer Center, contact Zozaya at 895-0892.