The Barton Community College Board of Trustees gathered Tuesday evening for its regular meeting and discussed one of its nine over-arching goals, known as ENDs. This month’s focus was on “Academic Advancement,” which deals primarily with ensuring students are able to transfer successfully if that is their intent.
This END states, “Students desiring academic advancement will be prepared for successful transfer to other colleges and universities.” Within that statement are four supporting goals: “Students will have the academic prerequisites sufficient for successful transfer. Students will have appropriate knowledge of transfer requirements. Students will have adequate preparation to be successful after transfer to other colleges or universities. Students will be able to obtain bachelor’s and advanced degrees through studies sponsored by Barton Community College.”
Barton student Zack Steffen, sophomore of Great Bend, offered a testimonial of his transfer experience at the meeting Tuesday. As a home-schooled student, Steffen managed to acquire 32 credit-hours of college coursework before graduating high school. He then began pursuit of an associate of science degree with an emphasis in engineering.
He plans to attend Wichita State University in the fall to study biomedical engineering, which he hopes will prepare him to contribute to the field of prosthetics and the use of technology in medicine.
Not only will the transfer happen seamlessly, he has already qualified for a $6,000 academic transfer scholarship thanks in large part to the guidance of Barton advisor Karen Kratzer, who helped him work with WSU on selecting the appropriate classes to prepare him for the university’s program.
“She was a big help,” he said. “She made it all possible, as well as Angie Maddy and all my instructors.”
Steffen said the quality of the coursework was top notch and had nothing but praise for Barton’s faculty. He said they made it possible for him to take heavy course loads. In the spring 2017 semester he is taking Engineering Physics II, Speech, Anthropology and Calculus III.

Highlights from the END report include:
• 323 students pursued transfer (2015-16 academic year)
• Barton has 56 trained advisors
• Advisers serve more than 3,000 degree-seeking students
For more information, visit trustees.bartonccc.edu.