ASSISTance: Fall 2022

Upcoming ASSIST Closures and Important Dates - Please note the following office closures for ASSIST Central Services (ACS) for the rest of the 2022 calendar year:

• Friday, December 23 through Monday, December 26 - Winter Holiday
• Tuesday, December 27 through Thursday, December 29 - Winter Curtailment
• Friday, December 30 through Monday, January 2, 2023 - New Year Holiday

• Project Update - Development work is 96% complete for the tasks needed to allow Articulation Officers (AOs) to begin working in the new articulation management area. In addition to the modernized code and framework established for basic articulation building and template management, features completed include:
  • Code improvements needed to display modernized articulation agreements in HTML on assist.org.
  • Setup required to run current and modernized articulation systems simultaneously so AOs can easily make 2022-2023 current agreement updates and work on 2023-2024 modernized agreements.
     
• More time has been spent finalizing data migration scripts, implementing user design feedback, creating articulation reporting capabilities, and preparing for AO workgroup system testing. Visit the Articulation Modernization Project Update page on the ASSIST Resource Center to access the project overview, general timeline, development progress, and visuals.
   
• Articulation Modernization Workgroup - In recent meetings, this group received updates and provided input on the continuing work in the build articulation and template management areas of the modernized system. This included a look at articulation attributes, instructions/advisements meant to add clarity to more sophisticated articulation scenarios, and agreement generation and publishing. Workgroup members are expected to begin testing the modernized system in the very near future!
   
• ASSIST Team Modernization Support - The ASSIST team has been testing in-progress work, and deeply embedded in planning and preparing materials for AO system testing and training.

• Completion of a large-scale curriculum development and re-design project that included a modernized course history screen and improved code and database management structures for cross-listed courses, prefix changes, reactivations, and course outlines.This extensive work significantly improved data management and strengthened curriculum data integrity.
   
• Launch of IGETC Area 7 in data management system for CCC AO course submission and CSUCO/UCOP review.
   
• Implementation of performance improvements in the course review area ahead of the CSUGE, CSUAI, and IGETC review cycle.

• The Budget Act of 2022 allocated funding to integrate the Association of Independent California Colleges and University (AICCU) member institutions onto the ASSIST platform. With this direction and funding, ASSIST’s goal is to provide California transfer students with one-stop access to transfer articulation information for colleges and universities across the state.
   
• ASSIST is in the first phase of gathering the necessary information to develop a strategic, comprehensive, and structured approach to this integration. To further that process, we partnered with UCOP’s Strategy and Program Management Office to create an implementation plan by March 31, 2023, that considers user needs, identifies technology implications, and ensures appropriate support resources.
   
• As you can imagine, expanding the scope of articulation outside of the public higher education sector is a fundamental change for ASSIST. It is also an exciting opportunity. In the coming months, we will gather input from a diverse body of ASSIST users and transfer partner subject matter experts to provide the insight and feedback required to make this process as streamlined and student-centric as possible.
   
• We anticipate the integration work to be completed in phases. The current phase will focus on requirement gathering and implementation planning, moving into technology planning and development. At this time, we anticipate being able to display participating AICCU member institution articulation agreements on assist.org in 2024. Throughout this process, ASSIST will keep the articulation and greater transfer community apprised of the implementation progress. Any questions should be directed to Holly Demé, the ASSIST Program Director, by emailing holly@assist.org. 

• In 1985, the University of California began to explore using computers to store, maintain, and display transfer-related data. ASSIST was created under the guidance and counsel of the three California postsecondary educational segments: the University of California, the California State Universities, and the California Community Colleges with the goal to use the computer to provide students and counselors with an easy way to access accurate and complete information about transferring from one California college or university to another.
   
• In the early ASSIST days, articulation agreement information was mailed to the ASSIST Central Services office and stored in multiple filing cabinets near walls of campus catalogs.
   
• The first ASSIST system became accessible via the internet in the early 1990s with a user guide that included a section titled “What is the Internet?”
   
• More than 600,000 major, department, prefix and general education agreements are published each year on assist.org and more than 6,000 CCC course proposals are reviewed each year by the CSU and UC system offices to determine transferability and satisfaction of general education requirements.
   
• On average, assist.org has more than a million visitors a year who have access to more than10 million articulation agreements spanning almost 30 years.