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Thursday, March 28, 2024
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The dual degree program was created because NCF doesn’t offer an engineering option.

Antonia Ginsberg-Klemmt said she’s marveled at the sea’s non-renewable energy potential.

Ginsberg-Klemmt, a 21-year-old New College of Florida applied physics junior, said Florida can garner power from large underwater turbines. Power is generated by mass, and the ocean’s current can move large turbines to create power, she said.

Ginsberg-Klemmt said she was excited when New College of Florida and UF’s Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering announced July 7 that the universities will offer a new dual degree program. The program allows students to earn a NCF liberal arts and UF engineering bachelor's degree starting Spring 2021, said Donald Colladay, an NCF physics professor.

The opportunity could open doors for her to work in green energy one day, she said.

Students interested in the program will start at NCF. They will complete a minimum of 62 transferable credit units their first two years at the university. Then, they will transfer and complete 76 credit hours and three years at UF, according to UF and NCF’s agreement.

UF decided to undertake the program after two years of comparing courses taken at UF and NCF to see if students would be on track when transferring to UF, said Erik Sander, executive director of Florida Engineering Innovation Institute and Michael Durham, director of the UF Engineering Innovation Institute.

The program was reviewed by faculty members at NCF’s division of natural science and UF’s engineering department, he said.

UF and NCF faculty have collaborated in the past at UF’s Sarasota Innovation Station, a UF College of Engineering office which pipelines the colleges’ engineering graduates to Sarasota and its neighboring counties, Sander said.

Sarasota and the surrounding seven counties have lacked engineers in the past. The Innovation Station works to empower kindergarten to twelfth grade students to pursue careers in STEM. It also attracts engineers with the station’s opportunities for research, he said.

NCF students will be required to take introductory physics, calculus, chemistry and a computer programming language course while completing their liberal arts curriculum their first two years, according to the agreement between UF and NCF.

Students will also complete two independent study periods their first two years at NCF during the month of January, Calloday said. Independent study periods depend on students' interests and have ranged from creating a coffee shop to Ginsberg-Klemmt starting a rowing team, Ginsberg-Klemmt said.

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NCF students will then apply to UF through UF’s office of admissions’ transfer student application after they successfully complete their prerequisite courses at NCF, Colladay said. They can pursue a computer, electrical, environmental, materials science or nuclear engineering degree, Colladay said.

Students must meet engineering degree requirements, such as having between a 2.5 to 2.8 grade point average in their pre-requisite or critical tracking coursework, Sander said.

While at UF, NCF-transfer students will have to complete their UF engineering coursework and submit a fourth-year research thesis to NCF in order to qualify for their liberal arts degree, Colladay said.

NCF transfer students should not take more than three years to complete their engineering degree while at UF, according to the agreement.

The program was created because NCF doesn’t offer an engineering option, Colladay said. UF’s college of engineering also wanted to find new ways to diversify engineering options in the state of Florida, Sander said.

The institutions submitted an agreement to be reviewed by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC), the institution which handles academic accreditation, Sander said. They are waiting for SACSCOC to approve the program before Spring 2021, Colladay said.

Colladay said he expects the agreement to pass because engineering pre-requisite courses include courses taught in NCF’s liberal arts curriculum.

At first, Ginsberg-Klemmt was scared that NCF's announcement meant the college would be merged into UF because of a February state bill proposal that would merge Florida Polytechnic University and NCF with UF, she said.

However, once she read more into the program, she said she realized that it was a great way to celebrate and combine the two institutions’ diverse atmospheres. Ginsberg-Klemmt said both institutions can benefit because NCF has smaller classes and UF has a larger selection of courses.

Once the program is implemented, she said she is planning to possibly pursue environmental engineering at UF as both a NCF and UF student.

“I was definitely stoked about it because it’s not merging the schools,” she said. “However, it’s uniting the independent quantities between UF and New College.”

  • Students will attend NCF their freshman and sophomore year.
  • They will complete a minimum of 62 transferable credit units at NCF.
  • They will complete two Independent Study Periods at NCF.
  • Students will submit a research thesis paper their fourth year to NCF while attending UF.
  • Students will successfully complete pre-engineering courses, including introductory physics and chemistry courses, before applying to UF.
  • At UF, they will pursue a computer, electrical, environmental, materials science or nuclear engineering degree.
  • They must complete a minimum of 76 credit hours at UF.
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