University of Texas at Brownsville/Texas Southmost College and University of Texas Pan American legacy students will have to change to the UTRGV degree plan if they do not complete their legacy degree plan by August 2019.
Legacy students who graduate before the deadline will not be affected by it; however, the remaining students will have to switch to the corresponding UTRGV degree plan.
In an interview with The Rider, Student Success Vice President Kristin Croyle said that the majority of the legacy students have already graduated and the rest are expected to graduate by 2019.
Asked about the legacy students who will be continuing their education under the legacy degree plan after the deadline, Croyle replied, “For those students, we will work with them to transition them to whatever degree plan best fits their goals and best aligns to their coursework.”
She said the university is still evaluating how many students are going to be affected by this change.
“It is a little complicated to get a firm number, because any student that graduates between now and August won’t be affected,” Croyle said.
When UTRGV was created, the university decided to honor legacy students’ degree plans four years after the opening of the university.
Croyle explained that most students had even more than four years to complete their degree under the legacy plan.
“For most students that means that it is at least five years or more,” she said. “So, if like a UTB/TSC student started in 2014, he would then have five years on that degree plan and often more if they started earlier than that.”
One of the requirements under the UTRGV degree plan is to complete at least 25 percent of the degree at UTRGV.
For this reason, UTB/TSC or UTPA legacy students who transfer to the UTRGV plan after the deadline will have to meet this requirement by taking more courses to meet the 25 percent minimum.
Psychology senior Elsa Torres is a legacy student from UTB/TSC who, like many other legacy students, decided to stay on the legacy degree plan.
“They were giving me the option of switching my degree plan to UTRGV’s but since I was going to take two more years with them, I think, I decided to stay with UTB,” Torres said in Spanish.
She is expected to graduate this fall semester under the legacy degree plan. She will not be affected by the 2019 deadline.
Torres said that the transition to the legacy degree plan was smooth but she did encounter an issue with the equivalency of her courses.
“I think that what affected me the most was that some classes were not valid for UTRGV, so I had to take two more classes,” she said.
Asked how she was notified about the deadline, Torres replied, “In fact, at the beginning [an adviser] had told me that the ones who would not graduate before 2018 were going to lose all their progress in UTB,” she said. “Therefore, I hurried up with my classes, but later I found out that I had until August 2019.”
Croyle told The Rider that students who might be affected by this deadline will be notified during the upcoming semesters.
She said that UTRGV is going to work hard so that legacy students who switch to the UTRGV degree plan are not extremely affected by this change.
“In some cases, the degree plans will be shorter,” Croyle said. “And in some cases, it might require a little modification of the degree plan, like, if they took a course years ago that has changed somewhat in content. … We can do a modification of the degree plan to make sure that that course is still counted for them and that they don’t have to take another one to replace it.”
Torres said she is not concerned about her degree plan, but that is not the same story for some of her friends who are also on the legacy degree plan.
“I have friends that changed majors and are going to take longer,” she said. “So, since they were still in the [UTB/TSC legacy degree plan], I was worried mainly for them. But no, I was calmed because I continued with my plan of finishing by 2018.”
She also said she feels proud of being part of the UTB/TSC legacy.
Croyle encourages students to visit the Advising Center or her office for questions.
For more information regarding the legacy degree plans, visit or contact the Office of the Vice President for Student Success or Academic Advising. A graduation helpdesk is also available at the UTRGV website or at graduationhelpdesk@utrgv.edu.
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