In September, Marquette University established a formal partnership with City Colleges of Chicago, a public school system of seven Chicago community colleges, to better serve transfer students and facilitate the transfer process. Marquette Provost Dan Myers and City Colleges of Chicago Chancellor Juan Salgado signed the Guaranteed Admission Agreement and Star Transfer partnership.
With this agreement, Marquette becomes one of twenty Star Scholarship partners and is the first outside of Illinois. Qualifying students will be able to plan their transfer in advance by drawing on Marquette advising resources and also earn valuable transfer scholarships to help bring down the cost of attending Marquette.
The partnership between CCC and Marquette University is part of the City College’s efforts to add more 4-year universities to their Star Scholarship program. Started in fall 2015, the Star Scholarship program is an educational initiative championed by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel that covers the cost of an associate degree for qualified students. It provides scholarships in the form of tuition and fee/book waivers to high school graduates that have earned at least a 3.0 GPA from a Chicago Public School and test nearly college-ready in math and English, and enroll in a City Colleges structured, relevant pathway.
City Colleges of Chicago is the largest community college system in Illinois and one of the largest in the nation with 5,700 faculty and staff serving 115,000 students annually at seven colleges and six satellite sites. The seven colleges include: Richard J. Daley College, Kennedy-King College, Malcolm X College, Olive-Harvey College, Harry S Truman College, Harold Washington College and Wilbur Wright College.
This guaranteed admission agreement is the third of its kind for Marquette University. Marquette University offers similar programs with College of Lake County in Grayslake, IL and Milwaukee Area Technical College which has four campuses across the Milwaukee area. All are examples of Marquette’s efforts to increase transfer student enrollment by developing clear pathways for student transfer from community colleges.
Marquette continues to identify strategic transfer partnerships with community colleges around the country. More information can be found online.