| 0:00:00.20 | 14.0s | Loida González Utley | Hi, you are listening to Transfer Tea, a podcast for the AACRAO community sponsored by AACRAO, the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and admissions officers. I am your host, loa get ready for some tea. |
| 0:00:33.50 | 46.2s | Loida González Utley | Hello, transfer Tea listeners. I am so excited to be here today, recording this episode about transfer Virginia, a topic that I had been waiting for and hearing about for so long and I bet you have too. So here with me today, I have Patricia Parker who was the former Director of Transfer Virginia and now is the principal of PM Parker consulting LLC and Dr Micol Hutchinson, who is the interim Assistant Vice Chancellor for policy and instructional support ladies. Hello and thank you so much for making time for this episode. |
| 0:01:20.23 | 2.2s | Patricia Parker | Good morning and thanks for having us. |
| 0:01:22.80 | 1.5s | Micol Hutchinson | Glad to be here. |
| 0:01:24.87 | 50.0s | Loida González Utley | So, um I have low key been um stalking you all on linkedin, right? Trying to get the gist of transfer Virginia. It keeps coming up on um a lot of publications, it keeps coming up on news about transfer it. He keeps just resurfacing. And so um in, in some of the, some of the lectures and, and the literature that I've been reading. I said, OK, it's time for us to really dig deep into transfer Virginia and to get a grasp of what it really is, how it came to be all of the things we want to know every detail. Um, the good, the bad, the ugly and most importantly, why? So without further ado, I think the first thing that we want to know is where did it all start? |
| 0:02:15.63 | 195.8s | Patricia Parker | Well, I guess I'll jump in here and, and Micol knows, jump in anytime. Um It, ironically, I'll mention that Micol and I came on board our two positions at the same time, she was working on a transfer initiative that was a partnership with colleges and I came on as director of Transfer in fall of 2018. And um so we've kind of been running in parallel and answering each other's sentences ever since. So, uh Micol will jump in as well, but I, I came on uh in fall of 2018 as the Director of Transfer Virginia. Uh where did it come from? Well, there was some legislation in Virginia in the fall or in that legislative view that focused on some key tasks around dual enrollment, passport, um A general education package, a transfer agreements, pa pathways and a transfer portal. So the legislation said, hey, you guys in higher ed figure this out. We, you know, and, and quite frankly, the leg was, was fairly simple. I mean, it gave us some basic parameters, but it said go forth and figure it out. And so Virginia had a decision to make on whether we check the boxes to that legislation, which we could have done just ok, we did a pathway map or ok, we built a little portal or we could make the decision on how we were going to do transfer in Virginia moving forward. Um So we had the legislation that ignited the uh the whole concept. It came with a uh a line item budget uh to cover the cost of my position as well as the uh some funds for the building of the portal. Uh and for another uh position to help with that. So, uh the funding from the legislature was for the positions and uh funding for the portal. So that was, that was why it got started. We added on to that um a grant that it was a small grant. It was more a grant of support uh by three organizations, Aspen. So, a and HTM strategists and they had a grant called tackling Transfer where they were working with three states, Texas being one of them and Minnesota and Virginia. So that was a couple years of support as well as a small amount of funds just to help with some of the uh implementation plans that we wanted to do. Um So that's the, that's the why it actually got started. Uh And then what I will say, is we had to answer the big question next on, are we gonna check those boxes or are we going to do a comprehensive, uh, transfer overhaul in Virginia? And I bet you can guess which one we picked. |
| 0:05:32.58 | 64.4s | Loida González Utley | So, uh, a question that, you know, I was thinking of as, as I was listening to you is, um, you could have just checked those boxes, um, and just said, ok, I'm just going to do the bare minimum to make sure that we are, you know, in compliance, but you didn't. And it takes somebody very passionate about this, this job um about, you know, to really think about it as an opportunity to transform students in the state because in turn, right, as we educate students and as we assist them and, and provide better pathways and more equitable opportunities, we are essentially changing the dynamic of our entire state that we live in. Um Have you all experienced that or have heard, you know, the impact seen it maybe um in numbers and quantity or um qualitatively maybe in, in the, in the individual lives that you have changed |
| 0:06:37.82 | 3.0s | Patricia Parker | Micol. Do you want to jump in first or? Yeah, go ahead. |
| 0:06:41.45 | 177.2s | Micol Hutchinson | I do want to jump in. I was just looking for my unmute button. Um So, one of the nice things about the working in tandem um that Patricia mentioned right off is that my initial work with the Virginia Community College System had to do with and working directly with students. So, working with students at a couple of community colleges who were looking to transfer to one specific state university or considering transferring there. And so in that capacity, I got to really um I had the opportunity to get to know students and faculty and advisors and see how the broader pieces that Patricia was at the same time putting into place with transfer, Virginia could be applied or what challenges there were to applying them. Um and how they could positively impact students and how students responded to them. Um I got to see some of the the challenges in conveying the information. So Patricia is over here at that time, building these pathways, um we're starting to implement them and, and it it was quite apparent sometimes that the folks who were implementing those pathways were doing their work, the folks who were designing those pathways were doing the work, but advisor and students often didn't know that that work was happening at all. So um I was able to identify a few challenges that we would face with transfer Virginia. But at the same time, I was also able to see the ways that those pathways could work beautifully for students. So when, when advisor did know about the pathways and when students had received information about the pathways, I got to see very smooth transfer pathways. In this case, it was from a couple of community colleges into one university. But um because of the scaffolding that transfer Virginia had and that Patricia was actively building and, and building upon. Um we were um we were able to, to scale up those opportunities. I saw it at this microcosm. That's when we were hired, Patricia was always told she was the macrocosm and I was the microcosm. So working in that microcosm, I got to see how it could work really well when it was implemented for a specific student or a specific group of students at specific community colleges going to a specific university. Um And in my time, I, I followed Patricia in the Director of Transfer and Director of Transfer Virginia role. Um I would come back to those experiences frequently thinking about how, what had worked well on implementation and student facing and advisor facing side and what what we had tripped over when I was working in that microcosm. |
| 0:09:39.33 | 144.1s | Patricia Parker | Yeah. And I think I would add and, and I know later when mccole talks about, what does it look like now? I mean, there's a, there's some more that she'll be able to share but to, to your point of did it impact like was there any impact last spring? I will or just this past spring, I was copied on an email from one of the local colleges in Virginia and this, so I retired in 2022. So, you know, we're a couple years out and um on this email the vice president of the Community College was sharing some information with a new person uh that uh was on her team at that college. And the word she used like sent chills up my spine uh and joy of happiness. Um And that was, she said that apparently the new person was questioning something about transfer Virginia and she made it very clear that transfer Virginia is how we do business in the commonwealth and, and in in very supportive way. And so the fact that administrators are willing to put their stance behind transfer Virginia and say this is how we do business. Uh and even I heard from institutions on the border of Virginia that are do business with North Carolina, Tennessee, Maryland. Uh they are saying to those colleges in some ways, we want to do business with you because it helps our students. But this is how we do business in Virginia. And uh to hear that really said we made a difference uh in how we do business and what I truly like about it all is it really closed all of the equity gaps in communication and access to students. So now the student on little at little Eastern Shore Community College has the same opportunities as a student at Northern Virginia Community College and that we're seeing um already so it, it, it's like the best retirement gift I could have ever gotten. |
| 0:12:03.40 | 0.7s | Micol Hutchinson | I think |
| 0:12:06.20 | 112.0s | Micol Hutchinson | I like that as a retirement gift I think I gave you a card. Um But that was, this was better. I'd love to respond a little bit more building off something that Patricia just said um to your comment that it must, it would take a very powerful person. I forget how you phrased it to move this from passionate. Thank you um to move this from checking the boxes to doing much more than checking the boxes and making it happen because there are two big steps there being passionate can, can move you to, you know, one of those steps but but there are really a couple of major steps that you have to get through. Um and I think one of the and, and I'm saying this as someone who was on the outside, I wasn't um in the midst of transfer Virginia at this time. But the buy in from upper level administrators at the community colleges, at our public four year colleges and then at our private four year colleges was essential to the success of this. I mean, Patricia came with the passion. There was no question about that, but if, if everybody had stonewalled, um we things wouldn't have moved forward. So there was a lot of and, and again, I was watching this from the outside, but a lot of Patricia making the case for why this is important, talking about the equity issue, um the equity issues. Um talking about how this benefits students, talking about how it also benefits the institutions. Um And as those vice presidents, presidents, deans um work became convinced or came in, convinced. Uh there really was a collective passion and a collective power to it. Um And I think that was extremely important. |
| 0:14:00.0 | 122.5s | Loida González Utley | That's one of the things that stood out to me from what you have said and, and what uh Patricia just said it from that email that you received, I can gather that there was buying. Now, here's the reality in transfer. We don't have a lot of buying for not in my, in my particular institution right now because we serve all transfer students. We're an upper level institution, but for the most part, transfer students are forgotten population, they're, they're vastly overlooked. Staff is incredibly understaffed, underpaid. Um The concepts of transfer like building pathways is something that everybody wants. And, you know, I've, I've seen it, I've heard it, I've experienced it, build some pathways, but there's no resources and, and I think some people think pathways are built in like a day and you can build like 300 you know, in 30 days and just push them out and publish them and everybody's going to have buy in and that's really not the case. So what intrigues me the most about what y'all have said is the level of buying. How do you get to a point where everybody is on board? I mean, that could not have been easy and how do you get to a point other than, of course, legislation is a motivator, right? It always is. Um But, but again, you could have checked the boxes, you didn't, you went above and beyond. And now the next step is to create, buy in, not only for the students that you're serving, but everybody basically in higher education and an awareness of where to find the pathways, what they are used for, how they are used and how to deliver them another part. And this is probably um another um we can have another little segment after this um conversation is um transfer professionals are translators. How do you translate? What is on a paper to a student and ensure that the student is getting a consistent message throughout. I know that was a loaded question. |
| 0:16:03.78 | 0.9s | Patricia Parker | So |
| 0:16:04.80 | 3.1s | Micol Hutchinson | um Patricia, I trust you're going to talk about Stanton. |
| 0:16:08.15 | 382.9s | Patricia Parker | Yeah. So I'll, I'll break the rules. We had a rule that what happened in Stanton, Virginia stayed in Stanton, Virginia. But that's more just I think the creation of our transfer cult or something. I don't know what happened. It was magic, it was pure magic. So um in March of 2019, so I came on board in November. Um I wanna actually change something. You said we had legislation, we did not build transfer Virginia. Next, like we got the legislation, we got the call to do something. And so our next step was the, the call to action it wasn't even named yet. It was we, we've been called to action. So in March of 2019, in Stanton, Virginia. So we always joke about that. Um We had a Virginia call to action around transfer and there were 257 participants that and that represented over 60 all of Virginia's institutions. Uh We had anywhere from 4 to 6 people from each of the institutions. We had the representatives from the State Council of Higher Ed and the Virginia Community College system there. Not as direct participants, but as um they were the runners, they were the question answers but the 257 participants that were at the tables week day for six hours on this day in March, uh dove deeply into everything. Transfer. Um We did things like we assigned the seating so they didn't get to sit with their institutions. They, they sat with people, they didn't know they sat with people who were the competition up until that day and what we first did. And, and I tell you the night before, after we got everything set up, I was sitting by myself up on the stage just looking out at the room. And I said to myself, ok, tomorrow, we're either gonna change lives or we're gonna fail. Like that. That day was the pivotal point of Virginia deciding that transfer was important to them. And thank God that it uh ended up in transfer being um successful in Virginia and, and the group really working, but I really felt that that kind of scared excitement about that day. Um It was a magical day and, and what we worked on that day was everything from breaking down. All the silos and all the barriers that have been holding up. Transfer transfer in Virginia had been, there had been a lot of good work in Virginia. A lot of regional handshakes, a lot of agreements between one university and one community college. The problem is that for students that don't want to stay regionally, uh that becomes very confusing. And so we had to recognize that we needed to support and embellish all of those pieces that um that are already solid transfer work, but we needed to break down those silos and barriers. So, so during the six hours, uh the walls were like 20 ft tall and I think we had stuff hanging on them up to about 15 ft. I don't know, we were up on tables, hanging stuff on the walls. We um identified all the challenges, we identified all the opportunities and what was some great work already happening. And then we actually figured out what were the moving parts of transfer Virginia? This is where we decided, are we going to check the boxes or are we going to have a comprehensive approach? So it was the practitioners of Virginia that built the vision for transfer Virginia. They outlined all the different moving parts uh and created that, that proposal that then moved forward to transfer Virginia. Um And, and kind of big picture what was magical about that is again, I wanna stress that the people from the systems office and the State Council, they were the runners for the day. They were running all over, delivering markers. I mean, they were the support and they, and Micol was a fine runner. She was running all over the place. But um but, but the support was there to say, we trust that you all can come together and figure this out. Uh And when we left, there was right, then a culture of this transfer work is going to be about all of us working together moving forward. Um Policies, normally you get legislation and then policy is written at the state level to, to address that legislation and then that policy filters down and then the practitioners figure out how to do it. That's not what we did in Virginia. We took the legislation, we decided to have a comprehensive overhaul of transfer. We built that vision. We created the practices to support that vision. And then we went to the state uh council to say, hey, we need policies that will cement this work in our practices. Um And so we flipped this, we flipped the dynamic a little bit and it worked. I mean, I'll, I'll tell you right up front, there were no stipends on Aris or extra pay to any of the thousands of people that were engaged in this work over the last uh four or five years. Uh The only budget we had was for the two positions in the building of the portal. That's it, it was amazing. It was magical. |
| 0:22:32.15 | 60.6s | Micol Hutchinson | So if I could add on it was magical. And as a runner, um I very much enjoyed my tasks for that day. I can objectively speak to the energy that was there and the enthusiasm and also the way that over the course of the day we went, the room went the 250. What was your number? Patricia? 257. Um People went from, you know, there was a kind of awkwardness at the beginning. They were at these tables, maybe they knew a couple of people at the tables from other, you know, conferences they'd been to or something, but they didn't know each other. Some of them were in competition with one another as Patricia said. And over the course of the many hours, you could feel the energy shifting from again. I don't think, I don't, I didn't sense a lot of resistance but I sense some skepticism, some kind of confusion |
| 0:23:32.76 | 4.5s | Patricia Parker | or we've done this before. We've done that stuff before. |
| 0:23:38.6 | 179.7s | Micol Hutchinson | Yeah, and like an an awkwardness and by the end it, it wasn't awkward at all. Um So that, that was a really neat thing to witness and be on the sidelines of, um, can I also speak to your, your question? I think you used the word translator when you were talking about, uh, I love that word. I used to work as a, a real translator. So, um, I just, uh, latched on to that word because I think that is a, a really significant part of the, the role that the director of Transfer transfer Virginia would play, but that everyone else needs to learn how to play as well. And I think about the, the languages spoken um and there are, it's almost like there are different dialects, it's not always different languages, but students use a different dialect than, than advisors do. Then faculty do faculty speak differently and kind of using a slightly different language about transfer than the, the vice presidents or the presidents do. Those are different than what policymakers um use different from what the public uses. And so when you're in, when you're in any sort of leadership role and transfer, you're constantly having to switch the dialect you're using or the language you're using in order to convey what it is that you do and why it's important. Um and Patricia when, when you had that um call to action, you had to speak to some different audiences in that big room because it wasn't all faculty or all deans. Um But then throughout from before transfer, Virginia was established through now. And, and I think forevermore, um there's a constant need to, to keep assessing what, what language will work with this audience and how to reach them. Is it through casual conversation? Is it through um writing blogs, articles, emails. Is it on a podcast? Um So there really is an entire communication component to it that again is essential to the success and you could create the most beautiful pathways. But without those um attempts to communicate well and translate what we're doing and expand our audience and learn new languages. Um We couldn't continue to do or do as deeply what we do in the transfer world. |
| 0:26:38.97 | 160.1s | Loida González Utley | I use the term translator because I am a Spanish professor and I teach, often teach um non heritage speaking students, right? So what is natural to me and the terminology, the terminology that is normal for me is not for them. And one, I think it was last fall recruitment season when I was on the road. I said, you know, I'm going to do a little bit of an experiment or at a transfer fair. Um Students, community colleges, uh students know that they're being invited. They're here, they're, they're coming out, they know that there's 80 universities. I'm going to ask them what pathways are. And I indeed recorded, you know, a few students. I said, hey, you're at a transfer fair. You do you know that your university has pathways with these community colleges? Oh, I didn't know that well, do you know what pathways are, no, I didn't know that. Not a single person. And I was so I, I conducted this at like eight different locations within the State of Texas, which is large. Right? So I wanted to know if there were regional groups of students that knew what pathways were and there wasn't. So we're using the terminology, pathways, um, websites, traditional transfer websites, post, um transfer agreements, articulation agreements, pipelines, um all sorts of terminology and, and you know, I go back and forth with this with the research that Columbia University did about how there's 100 out of 100 students, 80% want to transfer, but only 20 actually transfer. And I'm like, OK, we're missing the point here. It's not that the work is not being done, maybe it's that we're not translating it in terminology that the students can understand. And I know that I could and I could train my team to, but then we're dependent on community college advisor to translate the same way and then our own advisors to communicate with their advisors to translate the same way. And then sometimes we want and encourage faculty um to attend some recruitment events to talk to transfer students. But do they understand, you know, the curriculum alignment and, and how to, how to have that conversation with students? And so I am in complete awe that that from what I hear, there is some consistency in the way that is being shared with the student in a, in a way as a whole, in a way that students can understand and see the benefit of the work that is being done because that's really ultimately what it comes down to. |
| 0:29:19.34 | 87.0s | Patricia Parker | Yeah, I, I, I'd love, I know this is kind of jumping fast forward, but I think it's so directly connects to what you just said is one of the outcomes of the transfer. Virginia work are a common curriculum by major for all the students at the community college. But then that translates into a four year transfer guide we had, we had. So I think Micol and I were laughing because we had so much discussion over what to call things and people were using across Virginia the same word to mean eight different things. I mean, so anyway, but my point was so on the transfer guides and then we also ended up with statewide transfer agreement templates. So we call all of this our little carfax of education in Virginia, right? Like everything is consistently set up. But the reason I bring those up, right, this moment is one of the biggest missions for all of those documents is that they are in student friends language and and they get rejected sometimes because they're not in student friendly language. Uh and there's checks and balances for that. So you're exactly right that the communication piece and the translating piece is, is what, what makes it real if not it's, it's just good stuff on paper, right? Um So it's definitely something to pay attention to. |
| 0:30:48.64 | 15.6s | Loida González Utley | And so um one thing, so you mentioned the resources available, they're on the website now, the transfer Virginia website. And so we're able to see them, view them and that is forward facing for students |
| 0:31:04.93 | 0.6s | Patricia Parker | and |
| 0:31:08.21 | 1.1s | Micol Hutchinson | high schools, |
| 0:31:10.18 | 0.6s | Patricia Parker | everything |
| 0:31:10.76 | 9.5s | Loida González Utley | perfect. Um I had another thought and I totally ran away. Uh Micol, did you want to add on to, to that? |
| 0:31:21.1 | 31.1s | Micol Hutchinson | Well, I was just going to say that it was funny that you ran this experiment about the term pathways. I think that's beautiful, but also ironic because I often use the term pathway instead some of our other terms like common curriculum or transfer guides when I'm talking to people outside of Virginia because I feel like pathways is a more universally, less specifically understood term. And now you've just flown that idea out of the water. |
| 0:31:53.50 | 28.1s | Loida González Utley | So, so in pathways, we have ton ton ton curriculum alignment. That's a whole other level of buying, right? Like the level that you have to ask people to change things, not just the coding of courses, but maybe potentially actually change the way they're teaching or the content of what they're teaching to match. Did y'all experience any of that? |
| 0:32:22.20 | 230.8s | Patricia Parker | Yeah. So it was really, that was the easy part. What are you talking about? So what we did um in terms of the uh curriculum and coursework is we started first with the courses and I'll, I'm a math professor. So I'll use math as a poor example. But in the community college, which is a system which has common numbering, there were seven versions of statistics, it for a community college. And you know, at the upper level, there's some different types of statistics. But at the lower level, seven versions, the reason there were, were these gentleman handshakes between a university and college. If Micol's college will teach statistics this way, my university will transfer that course. But that doesn't mean the other 22 community colleges would teach it that way. And imagine the students that take the same course, but don't get the same credit because they didn't have Micol as their teacher, right? So um the first thing we did was develop over 270 courses that defined the transfer courses in Virginia. So all 34 transfer disciplines had their courses overhauled with the four year faculty as part of the process. So the two year and the four year faculty came together as disciplined teams and created the courses that would best transfer and prepare students at any of the universities. And the results of that was no longer was the university keeping track of which college or which teacher taught the course because now all students would be getting the same content. The next step was to then work on the curriculum. And so for each of those 34 curricula uh I only had the pleasure of doing the first five. and then Micol and her team have taken the others forward. But the point of that curricula was what does, what do the 1st 60 credits of a student's journey need to be if I want to major in business, but I don't know which university I want to go to. And so the common curricula is such a way. Again, the faculty teams from the two year and the four year got together to build that business common curricula and the universities gave all their input. So now if I wanna be a business major and I'm going to any of the 23 community colleges, I take the same preparatory business curriculum. It prepares me for any university and they create a transfer guide that shows exactly how those 60 credits are going to apply. And there are usually somewhere around six or nine credits of choice. Uh But usually it's pretty universal kind of choice. Um But the university can narrow that down and then they say here's what the other 60 credits will look like. So they sh we really took on the thing of not just talking about getting an associate's degree, but getting a bachelor's degree through transfer. Here's your stop at the community college and here's what it looks like to earn the exact same degree as a student that comes to us, traditionally out of high school. Um So, yeah, it was the easy part in my mind. Um, bringing, I mean, it, I don't know, Micol, I thought it went pretty easily, |
| 0:36:12.97 | 1.0s | Micol Hutchinson | like I said, |
| 0:36:14.46 | 3.6s | Patricia Parker | yeah, I'm not joking. I haven't thought it. |
| 0:36:20.11 | 152.4s | Micol Hutchinson | And I think so. I was joking when I said no problem. It was a breeze. Obviously, there were a lot of steps to, um, getting those courses developed. But I think the steps worked, I think they worked beautifully and I keep came into a process that had already been developed. So I'm not complimenting my own process here. Um The most important part of that process was the collaboration among the two year and four year faculty, which Patricia mentioned a couple of times and that's really how any of this was able to happen. Um And just to jump back for a second to our translator analogy, um I think it was very helpful, both Patricia and I have backgrounds as faculty. And in that capacity, we did advising because you can't be a faculty member without having also advised students and having fluency in kind of the faculty languages and the the languages of advising are essential in creating that, that buy in. So when we were, and I I and I won't speak for Patricia, I assume she has the same experience with it. But when I'm working with faculty groups from the two year colleges and the four year colleges who are preparing to create a course or revise a course, um or in the process of doing one of those things, the, the ability to make sure that we're all on the same page is vital. And I think maybe Patricia, that's why it didn't seem that hard to you that getting on the same page wasn't as hard as I expected either. Um That once you put two year faculty and four year faculty into a, a room together, usually a zoom room, Um They realize that they have a whole lot more in common pedagogically than they assumed before. Um And everybody in that room, everybody who has volunteered to help develop a course is most focused on student success. There's no one who's coming into that process thinking. So how can I get a maximum number of students to fail or how can I possibly make this as difficult as it is as it can be to transfer? And I uh I think once everyone recognizes that they're, they're speaking the same language and they have the same goals creating those courses isn't as difficult as it would be. |
| 0:38:53.35 | 85.8s | Patricia Parker | Now, one time I did have to withhold lunch until they came together and agreed. So you, you do always have that option of withholding lunch. Um But I would, I would say the other magic to those meetings is not only that the four year and two year were making connection, but the four year people were making connections with each other because the math departments at the different universities didn't ever get together in Virginia to talk math. So it was building relationships between the two years, the four years, the four years, the four years and the private institutions were invited. So it really just kind of brought them together in a kind of a common way. And then there were times we needed somebody in that group to step up and say to the rest of the group, hey guys, we're making this too hard. And that did happen where uh uh a chair of a math department at a university reached out to every everybody and said, we're asking the community colleges to teach a seven credit statistics course and three credits, we have to come together and figure this out and narrow it down. And so sometimes key players had to step up. So it wasn't always smooth sailing, but the end result was always a win for the students. And, and I think that's of course, what's most important. |
| 0:40:20.37 | 44.5s | Loida González Utley | So y'all mentioned a few things. So I wanna, and they spark some questions um in comparison. So um Texas has something similar. We have a common core TCCNS. Um This is a volunteer system and in Texas, although it's been mostly adopted, there are institutions, public institutions that opted not to be a part of it. Um As well as private institutions in the transfer. Virginia case. Did you get opt in from everybody or did private institutions say no we're not going to opt in or are there larger schools that said, well, you know, we have enough students, we don't need transport or you know, the case did everybody in is the question. |
| 0:41:05.17 | 134.2s | Patricia Parker | So let me be clear that first of all, the legislation said that all public institutions will do at least those items that the boxes are checked with. That said we had a couple of institutions that did not fully it it, they participated at different levels, but they didn't drink the entire gallon of Kool Aid. Um And, and I think we're still dealing with some of that. So uh part of it might, I think in some cases it's, we don't need you, we get the transfers we want, that's it. In other cases, I think it's an institutional capacity and a and ability to do it, they want to do it, but the capacity is not there for whatever reason. So we have a couple publics kind of skirting along the edges or doing pieces of it. Uh And likewise the privates initially, we had a handful of about, I don't know, six or seven privates that were all in right from the beginning. Uh We now have over 12 or 15 of them that are, are, you know, really buying in and, and that number is growing, we're doing some uh additional work with the privates through another grant right now to try to help get them on board, but they're in, I, we can't deny that when we started the conversation. Transfer still wasn't a big word in households or in the president's office. Right. Presidents didn't talk about transfer in 2018. It was still one of those things out there. Uh, the enrollment cliff comes along and now presidents are talking about transfer. So we're seeing some changes in who's paying attention, I would say since about 2021. So about the time my last year, Micol's first year transfer all of a sudden became really important, not only in Virginia, but across the country and all of a sudden presidents and provost care about transfer. So the timing couldn't be better to solidify some of this stuff uh while the, the everybody is listening for sure, |
| 0:43:22.35 | 125.5s | Micol Hutchinson | that is such a, an important point and such a good point, Patricia and I, I'd like to add um just a little bit of complication on top of that, everything you said is correct. Um And uh I don't generally like to think about, you know, the enrollment cliff, which is really a crisis for or on an incoming crisis for higher education as a positive, but there were ways in which it was positive for um for the recognition of an appreciation of transfer. The one negative that I I would identify is that um often the community colleges are looked at as a source of students, um numbers of students because of the enrollment cliff and a Um And since this is in a podcast, you can't see my, my air quotes but uh an easy source of increasing diversity. Um and it is true that our community colleges are more diverse than our four year schools. And that there are many students who want to transfer, like you mentioned them earlier who are not transferring or not completing for reasons that we are always trying to better understand. But I I think we do our students an enormous disservice if we, if the four year schools are looking at the community colleges as just kind of an easy source of students that will improve their numbers, whether their numbers are enrollment numbers or um the diversity of their campuses. And so that's where we need to be having additional conversations to ensure that four year schools aren't just sort of seeing a, a pool of students grabbing those students or trying to grab those students but not adequately supporting them or not recognizing the cultural capital and the the rich backgrounds that those students bring with them. |
| 0:45:29.2 | 68.9s | Loida González Utley | I asked the question about um about the buy in um to touch some of what and may Cole said um because the traditional air quotes, traditional transfer student is an 18 year old that goes to two years to community college and then receives an associates degree and does a bachelor's degree. But the reality is that transfer students are not just vertical, they're also horizontal. And so my question for the buy in is we do experience, you know, swirling even horizontally from institution to institution all the time. And so when I asked that question, it was because it had triggered the thought of, you know, if, if we only have partial buy in, um then what happens to the students or what discrepancies do they experience in applicability of their coursework if there is a little bit or no or some buy in, um, you know, what happens to their curriculum? And do we, do we end up losing the students? And I guess those are, you know, that would be a whole case study. |
| 0:46:38.46 | 193.7s | Patricia Parker | Yeah. So you're exactly right. And, and we, in Virginia swirling is like, I think it's a common word like, because we have so many swirls uh between the community colleges, especially when we have community colleges that border each other, then we see the students kinda, where can I get, where can I get what I really want? Right, kind of thing. Uh But, but we looked at, you know, the loss of credits that students were experiencing and again, I'll stick with the business example just if you were working on your associates degree in business and you changed to one or two community colleges, those students were losing more or, or the same, if not more credits than when they transferred to the university because the business programs at each community college were different. And so not uh, and I'll just pick something like business law at one school wasn't in the program at the other. And even though the university would take business law, the other community college wouldn't take business law. Sometimes they wouldn't even take the same course with the same number. Like, I don't know, business 108. If you took it at this community college, it didn't count at this community college. So the community colleges had to really address that swirling uh ness as well. Um And that loss of credit and that is probably was, I think one of, well, one of the two premier reasons for the development of the common curriculum because now a student can swirl between the community colleges and not have any loss of credit. Um And then you have to worry about those that go to the university and then come back to the community college, they drop out or they decide to switch or whatever. Um, they were losing credits because the community colleges wouldn't necessarily honor the reciprocating equivalency to the class that they wanted to transfer to the university. Does that make any sense? Um You know, they took a class at the university which was equivalent to English 111 at the community college, but the community college wasn't willing to award that credit even though they wanted the university to do it the other way. Um So all of these things had to be work and that's that comprehensive package of to transfer. You couldn't just build a curriculum you had to deal with, you know, the rep, I can't say that word. The reciprocal, the reverse. You know what I'm talking about? Um I can't say that word. The reciprocity did I say it? I did. Yeah. Um So you have to deal with that. You have to deal with reverse transfer. Oh, by the way, dual enrollment was being treated differently from um on campus, we had to deal with that. So you had to really make a difference. You had to hit every pain point in, in the conversation. |
| 0:50:01.61 | 27.5s | Loida González Utley | Now, I don't know about you, but I am eager to continue learning about transfer, Virginia and all of the things that it has done and will do for transfer students. The wealth of knowledge that has been shared is amazing. And so I hope that you guys continue to follow us, be sure to follow transfer T podcast wherever you listen to your favorite episodes. And for now that's the tea. |