What is Common Course Numbering (CCN)?

State Strategy: Common Course Numbering is one of many state strategies to improve transfer-focused transitions from public community college to universities given the large numbers of students who transfer from community colleges. Approximately one third of Oregon’s public university graduates with a bachelor’s degree in recent years transferred from an Oregon community college.​

Increased Need: Undergraduate transfer students represent a large and growing segment of OSU student population across all our locations and modalities.  OSU continues to work on making pathways into the university seamless for students coming from other Oregon postsecondary institutions and beyond. In addition to internal initiatives to evaluate and improve the transfer student transition and experience, OSU is active in efforts to streamline transfer in Oregon.

OSU's Commitment: While many of these initiatives are mandated through legislation, OSU believes there is great value in making transferring within the state more transparent for students and is committed to working alongside our state colleagues to create a streamlined process.

SENATE BILL (SB) 233

SB 233, passed in 2021, establishes a statewide 15-member Transfer Council with representation from Oregon’s public universities, community colleges, and from secondary education. The Transfer Council is charged with developing recommendations to improve academic credit transfer and transfer pathways between Oregon’s public community colleges and universities.  Specifically, the Transfer Council is to develop a common course numbering system and continue work on Major Transfer Maps while also addressing other credit transfer-related concerns, building upon the transfer work previously completed under HB 2998 (2017).

This work will support the State’s commitment to equity (Oregon Equity Lens), which “requires the intentional examination of systemic policies and practices that, even if they have the appearance of fairness, may in effect serve to marginalize some and perpetuate disparities.” CCN will remain a primary conduit for achieving this goal by aligning the most transferred courses in Oregon.

OSU Transfer Council Members
  • Alix Gitelman (representing Academic Officer from Oregon Public Universities)

CCN Subcommittees

Faculty Course Alignment Subcommittees are tasked with the following:

  • Align course learning outcomes,
  • Align course credits (currently under discussion),
  • Align course title, subject prefix, and number,
  • Align course description, and
  • Utilize the course designator for the newly aligned course (“Z” i.e. MTH 111Z)

 

CCN Subcommittee Members 2024-2025
  • Business:  Prem Mathew and Logan Steele
  • Biology:  Lori Kayes
  • Chemistry: Margie Haak and Paula Weiss
  • Economics: Camille Soltau Nelsor
  • Psychology: Kathy Becker-Blease
  • Sociology: Kelsy Kretschmer 
CCN Subcommittee Members 2022-2023
  • Communications: Colin Hesse
  • Math: Sara Clark
  • Statistics: Lisa Ganio and Yuan Jiang
  • Writing: Tim Jensen (subcommittee co-chair)
CCN Subcommittee Members 2023-2024
  • Business:  Prem Mathew and Logan Steele
  • English:  Tim Jensen and Marcos Norris
  • Math: Sara Clark
  • Psychology: Kathy Becker-Blease
  • Writing: Tim Jensen (subcommittee co-chair) and Kristy Kelly
Additional CCN Subcommittees

Additional OSU Support

In addition to the statewide committees, several staff and faculty are working hard to support implementation at OSU:

  • Caryn Stoess, Curriculum Management:  Implementing courses into CIM
  • Erin Bird, Transfer Transitions Coordinator:  General questions and university outreach
  • Autumn Landis,  Project Manager: Project management for CCN development and implementation

How You Can Get Involved

There are many nuances to this project and we encourage you to participate!  Here are a few ways for you to get involved:

Attend Meetings Virtually

All public meetings (and materials) of the Transfer Council and its subcommittees are available on Current HECC Public Meeting Materials. Additionally, subscribe to receive the public meeting notices and announcements via email. 

Review OSU CCN Courses

If your program requires one of the courses, connect with and and support the OSU faculty representative working on that subcommittee. 

Join a Future CCN Subcommittee

After Transfer Council approves the next set of courses to be aligned, a request for faculty nomination will be sent out to Chief Academic Offices, Provosts, faculty associations, and other relevant unions.  You may also self-nominate to serve on a Faculty Course Alignment subcommittee for two-years. 

General Timeline of Development and Implementation for Each CCN Cohort

Month Action
January - June CCN Groups convene to align course learning outcomes, credits, and make recommendations on number, prefix, and name where possible
September - December CCN Groups present aligned courses to Transfer Council and HECC Commission for approval
April of the next year Courses developed in prior calendar year are now available for student enrollment
CCN Cohort Course Lists

2022 CCN Course list (ready for Summer 2023 enrollment)

  • Communication: COMM 100Z, 111Z, 218Z
  • Math: MTH 105Z, 111Z, 112Z
  • Statistics: ST 243Z
  • Writing: WR 121Z, 122Z, 227Z

CCN courses matched to OSU courses

For more details on learning outcomes and other aligned components, please view the Fall 2022 Summary of Approved CCN Courses.

2023 CCN Course list

Approved by the Transfer Council, November 2022

  • Business: BUS 101, 211, 213
  • English/Writing: ENG 104, 105, 106
  • Math: MTH 251, 252, 253, 254
  • Psychology: PSY 101, 201, 202
  • Split courses (e.g., MTH 111A + MTH11B = MTH 111)
  • Co-requisite courses (e.g., one-credit companion math courses that provide affective and non-cognitive support for students)
  • Information literacy outcomes for community college students

2024 CCN Course List

  • Business 131, 226
  • Economics: 201, 202
  • Psychology: Lifespan Development
  • Sociology: 204, 205, 206
  • Chemistry: 104, 105, 106  or  221, 222, 223
  • Biology: 211, 212, 213 (221, 222, 223) or 231, 232, 233

2025 - 2026 CCN Course List

  • Statistics: ST 244 will be evaluated a minimum of 1 year after ST 243 is offered
  • Math: MTH 254 
  • Spanish Cluster: Spanish 101, 102, 103 (FIrst year Spanish series)
  • Health and Fitness Cluster: Convene subcommittee to determine courses
  • History Cluster: History of the U.S. 201, 202, 203

Beyond 2026 CCN Course List

The Transfer Council will use the following approach to select courses:

  • Revisit highly transferred course list and prioritize completion of courses on the new course list such as Biology, Art, Sociology, Anthropology, etc.
  • Prioritize courses on the most-commonly-taken course list at Community Colleges
  • Convene subcommittee to discuss approach to CTE courses
Frequently Asked Questions

How are the courses selected for CCN?

A list created by registrars from Oregon public institutions reflects the top 80 transferred courses and the number of times that a course transferred into public universities from an Oregon Community college over a period of three years. For more information on how the list was created, please see "Course List Creation" in the Transfer Council report to the Oregon Legislature. 

Using the process identified by the Transfer Council, HECC staff created a draft list of courses for each deadline. This list, along with a faculty feedback form, was sent to Provosts, Chief Academic Officers, and Dual Credit Coordinators for distribution to relevant faculty.  Faculty were asked to comment on course clustering (e.g., if any courses are not included that should be, which courses are already significantly aligned) and were also provided an opportunity to provide open-ended feedback.

Can OSU modify any of the CCN information?

In 2022, the Systems and Operations subcommittee developed a framework to support faculty subcommittee work in aligning course numbers, titles, prefixes, and course descriptions and course learning outcomes for CCN. While there are institutional guidelines that may impact stylistic nuances for course title, description, and subject code, these should match the baseline decisions within each of the faculty subject groups. 

For course learning outcomes and course descriptions, courses must be 100% aligned with the agreed upon outcomes and descriptions.  Variations in the aligned outcomes and descriptions are only allowed to account for stylistic nuance requirements of individual institutions with the intent remaining the same.  

An institution may choose to add course outcomes beyond the adopted statewide outcomes as long as these additions do not change the agreed upon statewide course learning outcomes. In addition, the statewide course learning outcomes must make up at least 75% of all course learning outcomes at each institution. For example, if the CCN subcommittee created 3 outcomes for a course, the institution may add up to 1 additional outcome that does not negate the 3 outcomes.

Similarly, institutions may add content to the course description, as long as it doesn't negate the existing description or comprise more than 25% of the content.

What do I need to do if a CCN course is required by my program, or is a prerequisite for a course?

Fear not, OSU's Curriculum Management team will initiate many of these processes your behalf! Please refer to Adding CCN Courses to CIM to learn more about the implementation process at OSU.