Truman State University and Saint Louis University began discussions about the possibility of developing a program in which Truman students could transfer to SLU to study law.
The conversations between the two universities began in December 2017. Janet Gooch, vice president for academic affairs and provost, said the universities are discussing a three-plus-three program, meaning students would attend their first three years for an undergraduate degree at Truman, then transfer to SLU where their first year of law school would count as the final year of undergraduate studies. Gooch said the students are expected to take six years of schooling total — three years at Truman pursuing an undergraduate degree and three years of law school at SLU pursuing a law degree.
“It’s a nice opportunity, both for students here at Truman, and then also there are advantages for SLU to get high-quality students into [its] law program,” Gooch said.
Right now, the discussion with SLU is only about a law program, Gooch said, but there are similar types of articulation agreements in other fields at other schools. She said Truman is working on programs in which students at community colleges can transfer to Truman and where Truman students can transfer to other schools for postgraduate degrees.
Gooch said it is unclear when this program would become available for students because discussions started last December and those details have not been determined.
“This would be another [articulation agreement] of a little different appeal into an area that we haven’t been before, but there are a lot of undergraduate majors that could take advantage of this,” Gooch said. “So [the program] would be very marketable — I would think we would have a lot of interest here on campus in something like that.”