The Faculty Role in Transfer

For years, a widely held assumption about community college transfer students was that they were more likely to transfer successfully with strong academic advising and faculty engagement at the community college.

Now a new study published in Educational Researcher suggests that the faculty role is equally strong at the institution to which students are transferring.

The study found that "early exposure to faculty and/or advisors at baccalaureate institutions during the first term was associated with a greater likelihood of transfer to baccalaureate institutions. More specifically, the odds of transferring to a baccalaureate institution among students with early exposure was about 1.8 times the odds of their counterparts without early exposure. Interpreted in another way, the predicted probability of upward transfer for students with early exposure was 0.146 higher than that for otherwise similar students without early exposure."

The paper adds that "although the opportunity for early exposure to occur can be created by both students and faculty/advisors, given the control and power institutions have over the transfer process, students should not bear the responsibility of reaching out to baccalaureate institutions. Our findings embody a larger, symbolic yet powerful message that calls on baccalaureate institutions, including their faculty/advisors, to fully actualize their potential to become proactive and productive partners in serving pre-transfer students."

The authors of the paper are Xueli Wang, Brett Ranon Nachman and Xiwei Zhu of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and So Young Lee of Prometric.