NEWS
Dual-campus students hit administrative roadblocks
- CHANDLER BOESE
@Chandler_Boese
Master's student Alexandra Bode takes 15 credit
File Photo/KANSAN
Some students who attend classes part-time at both the Lawrence campus and KU Medical Center have trouble accessing the benefits of being a full-time student.
hours and works three days a week at the University—a pretty normal load. But when she got sick earlier this semester and visited Watkins Health Center, she was told that she wasn't a full-time student and hadn't paid the full-time student fee, so she couldn't get health care without paying a couple hundred dollars.
Bode is one of a few dozen students enrolled in a dual-campus program between the Lawrence campus and the University of Kansas Medical Center. Because
these programs are outside the norm and cross the administrative boundary between the main University and its medical center, the University systems often fail to recognize the students in these programs as full-time.
["University administrators] don't recognize that you're a full-time student, so it's like on each campus you're a part-time student," Bode said. "You don't really think about the benefits that you get from being a full-time student until you don't have them."
Bode is in the first year of working toward her master's in speech-language pathology.
Tanya Honderick, an
administrator for a master's in Public Health (MPH) program at the medical center, said some of her students have struggled with the University's classifying system as well. While not
all of the MPH students go between campuses, a few are simultaneously enrolled in an Applied Behavioral Science Ph.D. program at the Lawrence campus.
"It is a little tricky for
those students because of the two different campuses," Honderick said. "Even though it's one university, sometimes there are different processes or sometimes different requirements for the two campuses."
Honderick has dealt with systems like Human Resources or Enroll and Pay not recognizing her students' dual enrollment. She said she recently had to do special paperwork to get one of her students to start a Graduate Teaching Assistant position.
"We do have to pay special attention or do some extra things to help those students get everything coordinated right within the systems," she said.
Despite some downfalls, however, Bode said there are some beneficial aspects of the programs, since her classes in Lawrence focus on the more theoretical and social aspect of speech-language pathology, whereas her Medical Center classes provide an insight into the medical side. She also said there's a little bit of a cultural difference between the campus.
"Being in Lawrence, you feel like a student," she said. "On the Med Center campus, you feel like a working adult, because you're walking into the Med Center ... with your lunchbox and ID badge on and you're dressed more professionally."
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