A Board meeting hosted by the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) was held at the SIU Student Center on August 14 to talk about the Saluki Step Ahead program and the importance of it to the school and many transfer students.

On the SIU website, Saluki Step Ahead is said to be an opportunity for transfer students to finish getting their bachelor’s degree at the school fully online through select programs.

Advertisement

To qualify for the program a student must have their associate’s degree, maintain full time enrollment while attending SIU and be transferring from a partner institution of SIU, which includes colleges such as College of Dupage, Dallas College, Illinois Central College and more that can be found on their website.

The meeting began with introductions and a discussion of goals for Saluki Step Ahead with the main one being direct admissions in the program to cut down the student’s application process.

Before the start of the presentation, SIU Chancellor Austin Lane opened up by speaking on the past few years of tightening relationships with partner schools and making transfers seamless and easy.

Advertisement*

“Even though we may be the farthest south you can get in our state, students may not be able to come to Carbondale, but they can definitely take advantage of some of our programs that are fully online,” Lane said. “Not have to leave their workplace, not have to leave their families and really still be able to continue their journey through higher education.”

Student statistics show that 72.64% of students are Illinois residents with 68% being White, 15% Black or African American, 8.3% Hispanic, 7.5% international, 2.5% Asian and 3.3% for others.

Enrollment at SIU went up 2.3% overall in Fall 2023 with 6.8% of students being first time college students, 10.8% transfer students, 11.8% New Graduate and Professional and 9.2% of students online.

The presentation showcased around 40 schools that SIU is already working with in this program to begin the transfer process early by following the student’s journey from the start.

“So if they’re over at [John A.] Logan [College] for example, we want to make sure that students, if they want to be a psychology major or an accounting major, whatever they’re doing when they start at Logan, they also start with us, right?” Lane said.

Another key goal the program tackles is keeping students in state instead of seeking their online education out of state.

“When we set up a partnership with a group called Academic Partnerships with our online entity, they gave us a pretty alarming stat,” Lane said. “They said that 45% of students in the state of Illinois are receiving their distance education from outside of the state.”

After SIU’s enrollment increased last fall and new partnerships were formed with community colleges, Lane said the school is very optimistic about this semester but information on this semester’s enrollment is not public yet.

“We’re feeling really good about the numbers this fall,” Lane said. “And we won’t have that until [the] official tenth class day.”

An example of the benefits in the program shown were the price of education through the program. 

The school used in the example was Kaskaskia College with 60 hours of tuition and fees, which would range around $9,600. Transferring through this program and completing the rest at SIU would cost around $24,000 with the Saluki Step Ahead Program scholarship being $8,000 splitting $4,000 for each year.

The total including the Full Pell Grant (around $7,000) and the Full MAP Grant (around $8,000) would be around $33,000 with no financial aid.

Immediate growth in the program shows they started with 53 students in the 2022 academic year and have 101 students 2 weeks before the Fall 2024 semester. 

This semester 23% of students are underrepresented ethnicities (African American/Black and Hispanic), 74% are female, 55% are Pell eligible and 66% are first generation students.

The overall GPA of students in this program was 3.07 in the 2023 academic year with 76% of students not yet graduated but registered for the Fall 2024.

The seamless pathways talked about focus on students not losing credits during transfer. The pathway is currently for 12 majors including Accounting, Early Childhood Education, Health Care Management, History and Nursing.

Students apart from Saluki Step Ahead that came to speak include Crystal Ramirez, Leslie Leguizamo and Michelle Williams. 

“I decided that I wanted to continue pursuing my undergraduate degree but there were obviously a lot of choices to make and a lot of them were quite expensive,” Ramirez said. “That was when I was recommended to go to the University Center and transfer with SIU.”

Ramirez attended College of Lake County and Northern Illinois and lives in Grayslake, Illinois which is closer to Wisconsin than SIU. She spoke of the disconnection she feels being online and wishing she could meet the teachers who have helped her along the way.

“The awards [and] the accreditations of the online program was the big push,” Ramirez said. “I could… go fully online and decide that the online undergraduate degree was for me.”

Leguizamo decided to pursue her bachelor’s degree 20 years after she went to high school because her current job is now requiring the degree.

“It was a hard decision to make because as a single mom I wanted to choose a school that gave me the flexibility to be with my son and also work full time,” Leguizamo said. “ When I chose SIU, they offered me the scholarship which helped me not have to… choose school or my son.”

The program allowed Leguizamo to work full time, be a student and be a full time mom without coming out of school with a huge debt, she said.

Williams only lives 25 minutes away from SIU in Johnson County, but with three children and a full time job at Shawnee community college, commuting was not a commitment she could make.

“Without a Step Ahead scholarship I had used a lot of my Pell, so I didn’t even consider pursuing my bachelors degree,” Williams said. “But because of my advisor, you know, they presented this as an option so that got me looking at what programs were available.”

With a passion for criminal justice, Williams highlighted that the new generation of students doesn’t only include ages 18-24 but anyone who wants to change a career or get back into the workforce.

The agenda and minutes from the meeting can be found on the IBHE website.

To stay up to date on all your southern Illinois news, be sure to follow The Daily Egyptian on Facebook and @dailyegyptian on X [formerly known as Twitter].

Jamilah Lewis can be reached at [email protected]. To stay up to date with all your southern Illinois news, follow the Daily Egyptian on Facebook and Twitter.

Advertisement