Gloucester County College President Fred Keating, center, Freeholder Director Robert Damminger, right, and Freeholder Lyman Barnes make an annoucement about a partnership between Gloucester County College and Rowan University. (Staff Photo by Tim Hawk/South Jersey Times)

Gloucester County College is about to break the higher education mold.

School officials announced today that the college plans to create a stronger-than-ever partnership with Rowan University that would offer its community college students conditional acceptance to Glassboro’s four-year university.

Upon approvals from GCC’s Board of Trustees and the state Secretary of High Education, the community college would be renamed Rowan College of Gloucester County.

The partnership isn’t just a name change for the Deptford-based two-year school, according to its President Fred Keating.

"We are going to break the mold. And the mold needs to be broken," Keating told the South Jersey Times Tuesday in an editorial board meeting.

In a three-year exclusive agreement with the university, degree-seeking students in Gloucester County, he added, will “rethink geographically” where they want to go to school if conditional acceptance to Rowan is on the line.

Starting in July, students who wish to attend Rowan, which has an increasingly more competitive admissions process, can enroll in classes at the county college on a track to a four-year degree at Rowan.

On the same day, students at the Rowan College of Gloucester County can enroll and sign a non-binding letter of intent to attend the university if the student maintains a grade point average of 2.0 or higher.

“Once they declare a major, we map a sequence of curriculum,” Keating added, noting that all of the credits earned on his Deptford campus will fully transfer to Rowan University.

Students with eligible GPAs will be conditionally accepted to Rowan to finish the four-year degree on the Glassboro campus, or remain on Gloucester County’s campus to take Rowan University courses at a 15-percent discount.

All NJ Stars scholarship will continued to be honored, Keating said.

The plan also includes a RN to BSN expanded nursing program with Rowan that would give registered nurses with an associates degrees to earn a bachelors of science in nursing through Rowan.

The partnership is not expected to impact staffing levels of the Gloucester County school. Unions will not be melded and seniority will not be lost.

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For more on the Rowan College at Gloucester County partnership, see Wednesday's edition of the South Jersey Times in print and online at www.nj.com/south .

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