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Transferring between North Texas colleges could get easier because of an effort to prevent students from losing credits and help them stay on track to finish their degrees.

Four Dallas-area schools — Dallas College, Texas A&M University-Commerce, Texas Woman's University and the University of North Texas at Dallas — are partnering to improve the pipeline from community college to four-year universities. The schools are introducing joint academic advising and new programs of study to help students pick courses that will transfer between the schools and count toward their bachelor's degrees.

More than 13,000 Texas students who transferred from a two-year college to a university in the fall of 2022 did not receive credit for at least one of the courses they completed, according to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Those students did not get credit for about 21,000 community college courses because those credits fell outside of their new school's degree requirements.

Students lose time and money when they take classes that don't end up counting toward their degrees. The setback can discourage them from seeking or completing their bachelor's degree altogether. Those who do complete their degrees are not graduating fast enough, which delays their entry into the workforce and makes going to college more expensive.

The partnership between the Dallas-area schools includes three new programs of study in high demand fields — business, education and health sciences. The schools have agreed on what Dallas College courses will be counted for credit if students transfer to related majors at the Texas A&M Commerce, TWU and UNT-Dallas.

“The collaborative will simplify the process by providing clear, concise information for students,” UNT-Dallas President Warren von Eschenbach said. “It's really building the bridge across that pipeline between the two-year and the four-year institutions.”

The new programs of study mimic Texas Direct, a state transfer initiative that identified courses from several majors that would be guaranteed to transfer to any public university in the state.

The Dallas-area schools will also launch an online portal in the fall where prospective students will be able to see how their credits will be counted across the schools and track their progress toward degrees.

Texas legislators changed how they finance community colleges last year in part to incentivize transfers. Community colleges now get more money when their students earn at least 15 semester credit hours before enrolling in a four-year university.

The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

Disclosure: Texas A&M University and University of North Texas have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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Tick. Tick. Tick.

The clock in my OB-GYN's office was taunting me.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Any moment, I thought, this could kill me.

For more than a year, I knew something was wrong. Crippling migraines radiated through my skull, I would get dizzy standing up, and I felt like I was being ripped apart from the inside during my period. Every month, my husband offered to take me to the emergency room after I doubled over in pain. I usually objected, convinced I'd be brushed off because, well, periods are supposed to hurt.

As it turns out, periods aren't supposed to hurt that bad. A cyst the size of a peach was growing in my ovary, and they found an even bigger fibroid was on the back of my uterus. An urgent care doctor said I had to find an OB-GYN. I likely needed a hysterectomy, she said.

“You're done having kids, right?” She asked.

I had told her 10 minutes before that I didn't have any children yet.

I'm 33. My husband, Johnathon, and I married in 2022, after five years together. The doctor's words cut especially deep because this was the year we wanted to start a family.

My body was frozen, but my mind was racing. What does this mean? Am I in danger? She said hysterectomy. I have to be in danger.

That was January. Yesterday, we published the second story in a series dedicated to maternal health in the Texas Panhandle, in partnership with the Journalism and Women Symposium. My reporting paints a bleak picture for women who live north of me in and around Amarillo, where health care is difficult to come by.

The same can be said around Lubbock in the South Plains, where I've always called home. As I was working on that project, I was on the brink of an emergency with my own reproductive health.

My experience showed me a little bit of everything wrong with our health care system, including the high costs and how hard it is to see a doctor. Conditions like uterine fibroids, tumors that grow in the uterus, are common — 26 million women in the U.S. are affected by them, women of color more. And up to 77% of women develop fibroids during their childbearing years. And yet, many go undiagnosed because of a lack of public education and research.

The rest of that day, my phone was hot from calling nearly every OB-GYN in Lubbock. I told them how big both masses were and cried while I waited on hold. Some weren't accepting new patients, some said it wasn't severe enough, and others had waitlists as far out as 2025.

I didn't have that kind of time.

I finally found an OB-GYN's nurse who could see me, then refer me to the doctor if needed. It was an extra step, but I just wanted to get in the door. From the time I was diagnosed to when I met my new doctor, a month passed; it was the end of February. Every day felt like a day too long.

She got straight to the point — the cyst was dangerous. At any moment, it could flip and twist my ovary, which could make me lose the ovary or, in rare cases, cause infertility. It had to be removed.

Then there was the fibroid. It was closer to the size of a grapefruit but I could live with it. If we took the cyst but left the fibroid, there would be no guarantee that my pain would go away. This option meant a more extensive abdominal surgery, paired with a longer and harder recovery.

I booked the surgery to remove both. My doctor had an opening six weeks away — an eternity handcuffed to my cyst. Intrusive thoughts swirled around my head: What if the cyst flipped? What if it popped? My internet search history reflected my anxiety: “Can a cyst make my ovary explode?”

Words like “common,” “harmless,” and “without treatment” weighed heavily. My assailants were huge. I was part of the 8% of women who develop large cysts that needed treatment.

I won a lottery I never wanted to play.

I scrolled social media endlessly for other women's experiences. Some women with more fibroids or bigger cysts than mine commented that they couldn't afford their surgeries yet. It gave me a small taste of survivor's guilt. For so many people, medical care is a matter of debt or health, and some don't have the option to choose. I could split the $2,600 I had to pay upfront between two credit cards, and suffer with interest later.

A few days after scheduling, my doctor's office called and said my surgery was moved up to the following week. Someone else had canceled, and I was their first call.

I wasn't even close to coming to terms with my body betraying me. And I was frustrated with myself. I have reported on health care for years, and yet I fell into the same trap as so many of the people I've written about.

An urgent health issue caused by ignoring routine care? Check. A long wait because patients outnumber providers in my area? Check. Sticker shock from what it would cost to return to a clean bill of health? Check.

It was a cycle I couldn't escape. I was stuck in anger, close to depression, but far from acceptance.

By the morning of my surgery, some of my anger was replaced with resolve. I checked in, begrudgingly paid $100 toward my growing hospital bill, and tried to stay calm while my husband, parents and sister distracted me. My doctor stopped by my room to remind me that she's done this hundreds of times. She was confident. I was terrified.

Bright bunnies for Easter led the way along the walls of the hall toward the surgery center. I wondered if it was too late to turn back now.

Then, as my eyelids grew heavier from the anesthesia, I finally felt calm.

I woke up a few hours later. A little blue pillow, sewn by a local church, was on my midsection. I moved it and felt the bandages covering the seven-inch cut along the bottom of my stomach.

The surgery went as planned. She got everything, didn't find any more growths, and took photos in case I wanted to see, which I did. The fibroid looked like an anatomical heart. The cyst that I was so afraid of, was like a water balloon. Nurses warned me I would feel sore as the shots to numb my stomach muscles wore off.

I told myself to breathe. It's over.

But, the truth is I'm not sure if this is ever actually going to be over. Depression hit when I had my first period post-surgery — it was the most painful in my life. My body ached any time I got up, walked around, or even coughed. I wondered if the surgery and all the pain from recovering was even going to be worth it.

Then there's the scar. It's different from the one on my arm when I scraped it against my car's trunk as a teenager. It's not like a scratch from my cat. It's dark and sensitive to the touch. I see it and relive the whole experience all over again.

Months later, it's a good reminder of how I survived something that could have destroyed me.

I think back to the eight weeks between my diagnosis and my surgery, and I'm proud of how I managed to keep it together and write and prepare, knowing what was growing inside me. My friends, who know my love for horror movies, joke that I'm a real scream queen now, since I've been sliced open and lived to talk about it.

The price of everything does frustrate me when I look back on it. Some charges included $37 for inserting the needle in my vein for a blood sample or $11 per ibuprofen pill. After the first 30 minutes of my surgery, I was charged for every minute I was on the operating table. In the recovery room, I was charged per minute after the first 15 minutes while the anesthesia wore off. Before insurance, the surgery was nearly $31,000. My share after insurance was nearly $5,000.

There is something surreal about knowing the faults of our health care system first-hand now, instead of through collecting other people's stories. I still feel random rushes of pain, though not nearly as powerful as they were before. I'll probably always be worried that any little sign of change in my body, like my hair not growing or the return of my dizzy spells, means something is growing back.

All I can do is go to my annual screenings and stay ahead of it.

Big news: director and screenwriter Richard Linklater; NPR President and CEO Katherine Maher; U.S. Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-California; and Luci Baines Johnson will take the stage at The Texas Tribune Festival, Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Buy tickets today!

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HOUSTON — Gena Coston summed up the experience of being a teacher over the last four years with two words: very stressful.

Texas teachers have reported feeling burned out, underresourced and underappreciated in the last few years as they've dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic, classroom changes spearheaded by Republican officials and unsuccessful calls for more state funding toward raises.

For them, Vice President Kamala Harris' message of appreciation at the American Federation of Teachers' national convention in Houston on Thursday was a welcome change.

“It is you who have taken on the most noble of work, which is to concern yourself with the well-being of the children of America,” Harris said.

Harris' remarks came on the last day of AFT's national convention, three days after the labor group of more than 1.7 million members became the first union to endorse her presidential run.

“I'm excited because I know that she cares,” said Coston, who teaches eighth grade English Language Arts in the Aldine Independent School District.

Harris' message was on par with what some educators said they hoped to hear from her in recent days — a message of solidarity. They acknowledged that while the president cannot control everything that happens in schools, their influence and support while shaping the national agenda is meaningful, particularly at this time in Texas.

In the last few years, teachers had to adapt to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Enrollment declined. People left the profession. Officials, districts and parents fought over mask mandates. New state laws limited how they could teach about race, gender and sexual orientation and expanded the influence of Christianity. School boards banned books. A mass shooting happened. The state ousted the democratically elected school board and superintendent of its largest district. Gov. Greg Abbott used his power to push for a program that would allow families to use tax dollars to pay for their children's private education. And through it all, their calls for raises were largely unheeded.

Tiffany Spurlock, who teaches second grade math and science in Cy Fair ISD, said she is concerned about school districts' budget woes, accentuated by inflation and the Texas Legislature's failure to approve significant funding increases amid the fight for vouchers last year.

Spurlock also worries about her colleagues in Houston ISD, which is currently under state oversight. She and her three children previously attended school in the district, and she said current students, parents and teachers are being held to an unfair standard.

Spurlock said Harris has the perfect chance to advocate for a system that serves all families.

“We have to make sure we're doing things that's best for kids,” Spurlock said. “Not just processes wise, not just systematically, but also morally.”

Harris, who arrived in Houston a day earlier to receive a briefing on Hurricane Beryl recovery efforts, said Thursday she would fight for the rights of children and educators to have adequate resources to thrive in and out of the classroom.

She said she would also push back against a conservative-backed plan for a second Donald Trump presidency known as Project 2025, which calls for the elimination of the U.S. Department of Education, phasing out billions of dollars in assistance to schools serving low-income families and rolling back protections for students on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.

“Project 2025 is a plan to return America to a dark past,” Harris said. “But we are not going back. No, we will move forward.”

Prior to Harris' arrival, some advocacy organizations criticized her for being “out of touch” with Texas values.

“The people of Texas made it clear that it wants parents in charge of their children's education — not government,” said Genevieve Collins, state director of Americans for Prosperity-Texas.

Coston saw Harris' visit as an opportunity for the vice president to hear teachers out. She said Texas teachers are quitting their jobs because the pay and school funding are inadequate. She worries about the rise in teachers without formal training. She is also concerned about student and teacher safety, particularly as it relates to gun violence.

“We gotta feed our teachers and get them motivated,” Coston said. “So in turn, they'll get the kids motivated.”

Going into Harris' speech, Coston's expectation was for the vice president to show awareness of what's going on in schools. She said she was encouraged by what she heard.

“Now we just gotta see it happen,” Coston said.

Big news: director and screenwriter Richard Linklater; NPR President and CEO Katherine Maher; U.S. Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-California; and Luci Baines Johnson will take the stage at The Texas Tribune Festival, Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Buy tickets today!