| 0:00:12.98 | 13.7s | Loida González Utley | 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, Loida. Let's get ready for some tea. |
| 0:00:34.75 | 42.1s | Loida González Utley | Hello there. You are listening to a new episode of Transfer Tea. and wow, I know I say this every episode, I'm really excited, but I'm really, really excited for this episode. And just like many of you, I have my pen and paper to the side, ready to write down some notes and to learn from these amazing guests that I have here, that I was so grateful to ping on LinkedIn and they just were eager to respond. So, OK, let's get our guests introduced. I am going to allow them to introduce themselves, surprise, um, and we'll get started. |
| 0:01:17.50 | 33.9s | Jami Dawkins | All right. Um, my name is Jami Dawkins. I am the transfer programs coordinator for the UNC System Office, um, and I have been in this role almost 2 years. Um, I have been working in the transfer space of North Carolina for about 10 years, um, and my background is anything from The community college, um, I've worked in our community college sector here as well as our university sector over the last 10 years and specifically with transfer students from advising to admissions to transfer academic support. |
| 0:01:52.8 | 76.4s | Eric Fotheringham | Great. And uh I'm Eric Fotheringham. I'm the assistant vice president for Transfer Student Success and Partnerships in the University of North Carolina System office. I've been with the systems office for a little more than a decade and the past 5 or 6 years, I have been working um on a variety of, of different projects that would focus on transfer students but also kind of a larger transfer umbrella. So, uh, a lot of work with adult learners. Supporting some other uh folks in our office that work with military, uh, and then certainly transfer students and not just community college to, to university transfer students but then a lot of the lateral uh transfers between. Um, from in between universities and also we have a, a large, very robust, uh, private independent college sector in North Carolina. So, uh, it's been, it's been a great opportunity to, to work in a variety of ways around outside of just that traditional kind of vertical transfer but essentially anyone who has earned any kind of academic credit uh in, in, in ways that um. That maybe have had some barriers in in fully transferring or fully applying to their chosen degree. So it's, it's been it's a lot of fun. We're happy to be here. Thank you so much for having us. |
| 0:03:10.83 | 66.4s | Loida González Utley | It's the funnest. It's the coolest. So just kind of giving the listeners some context as to how this went down. If you all have been following transfers, if you've been in LinkedIn, period, you may have seen. Some buzz about the University of North Carolina system and they did something really cool. OK, they hashed out, they built 1400 pathways, 1400. I mean, I mean institutions, like, like if we get 20, that's a win, you know, we get 50, that's a win. So here we have 14. 100 pathways, and that's, you know, that really caught my attention when I read that the first time. I'm sure it to everybody that has that has read it, 1400 is a lot and it's a large task. So to understand kind of how all this went down, take us to the beginning, like, Transfer has been in existence since community colleges have been in existence, right, in the early 1900s. So, what happened? What, what, what brought this to fruition and why now? |
| 0:04:17.98 | 222.7s | Eric Fotheringham | Why, why, why now is always a really great question. So in, in North Carolina, we do not have a, a statewide uh coordinating office for higher education. It's, um, we were all doing our own thing, um, we in the University of North Carolina system, we've got 16 universities and, and one high school that's part of our system. The public community college system has 58 community colleges and then there are 34 private independents and The, when collaboration happens, it, it is usually just because we need to do it for students and there's not a whole lot of guidance um or direction. Uh, in that, in that pathway. Back in '96, our state legislature. Um, mandated some coordination, uh, kind of maintaining the independence but mandating coordination through a comprehensive articulation agreement and this was focused on associate of Arts and associate science degrees and just kind of gave some general parameters and say we, you, you need to figure this out, try to do a better job of, of helping students transfer. And so that kind of, that got going and, and there are a variety of successes and lessons learned from, from that and in 2014. Uh, the community college system and the university system. Kind of revised that entire agreement to offer more protections and more guarantees for transfer students. One of the things they put in there was that the universities would be required to create what are called what we, what we're being called baccalaureate degree plans. And the idea was universities, you lay out what community college courses these students need to take. And um and they came up with sort of like these general uh courses that were gonna be transferred everywhere. So if you pass the course, you can move that from one community college to the next. If you earn a degree, you're, um you can transfer over and those, those credits would, would apply. Well, about 2 years ago, uh, I mean. It almost happened immediately that there were holes in the system and people identify problems, but, um, and, and governing that agreement I'm sorry I step back a little bit, there's a transfer advisory committee and so it's made up of 4 representatives from the community college system and 4 from the university system and part of their role is to try to help transfer, um, move smoothly and, and, and support students. And so one of the things that kept coming up, coming up for them in some of their visits and their um. Their reviews and things were that these baccalaureate degree plans were great in concept but were not actually helping students. So it was, there was no standardized format given. There was no really formal way to verify that the information was accurate or to check and, and make sure that the that the universities were, they had that they had a process that they had a system and that it was, it was actually happening. And so, the Transfer advisory Committee. Um, started to have some conversations and started amongst themselves and with a few others and said, you know, at least we gotta, we gotta review these, the, the BDPs, the baccalaureate degree plans, and, and that's when um they started being at the universities create them, they kind of turned to us and they said, you know, we want to redo this. We don't know how, we, we don't, we don't know what it would look like, but we just need, these need to be better for students and for advisors. And so, um. And that was actually right about the time that Jami got hired. Jami, |
| 0:08:00.66 | 0.0s | Loida González Utley | um, |
| 0:08:03.70 | 3.8s | Eric Fotheringham | come on in. So Jami, I'll I'll hand it over to you to, to give more details because, um, |
| 0:08:07.66 | 234.8s | Jami Dawkins | I've been talking a lot. Yeah, um, yeah, so literally the first project sitting on my desk waiting for me, um, when I joined the system office was. Uh, the, the Transfer Advisory committee had just completed essentially a series of um focus groups, and they were meeting with the community college students. They were meeting with community college support staff who specifically worked in the realm of transfer, and they had done focus groups with the university transfer professionals who were responsible for. Publishing, maintaining, um, the, the BDPs are those previous baccalaureate degree plans and um when I got to the uh to this position we had all that feedback from those feedback groups and a lot of common threads came up among the different participants so students, faculty and advisors, university professionals we're all kind of expressing the same pain points, um. Um, and challenges with the BDPs as they were the bachelor degree plans as they were, um, and so we, we took that feedback and we started highlighting and kind of identifying the common threads from the feedback groups we hosted our own feedback groups so we kind of did follow ups with some of the pro the folks that were in the original feedback groups and it became clear that. We were ready to make changes. Um, the first, the first action item was to change the name of them, um, because baccalaureate degree plans, um, higher ed, we love our acronyms, BDPs, none of that rolls off the tip of the tongue. It wasn't reflective of what the resources were designed to do, um, and so it was very easy to, to start there with changing the name and then. That's how transfer guides became of what they are now or the name Transfer guides was born um because a lot of our universities were actually already calling them that because they felt like it was a better representation of what they actually were. So we had the name figured out but we had a lot of other tasks to kind of tackle with this um and so what we set out to do, um, based on the feedback from the students, the professionals using them, um. was improve the resource and to do so, we had a really important gap to bridge. And that gap was the fact that our creators of of the transfer guides were university folks. They were experts on bachelor degree completion, um. Our users were community college folks and they were on associate degree completion and that gap was pretty much the underlying issue in what was already established not working um and we and that was that came to light very quickly and so that was our foundation. We knew that that's where we had to start tackling the process was um bridging that gap so that our creators were building a resource with the user in mind and with the knowledge of the user in mind um and so that is kind of how the project started and kind of what was laying the foundation for us getting the work going um and we had just pretty much some common goals we wanted to establish consistent. Resources that look the same across all of our universities so we wanted the universities to build something that looked the same contain the same content um as it pertained to that specific institution obviously but we wanted to look and feel and content to be the same so students could easily find access compare we have a lot of great options here in the state of North Carolina. They should be able to compare all of those amazing options side by side. Um, and we wanted to, uh, accomplish that on the end for our users and also establish a process to make it easier for our campuses to build, maintain and ensure these resources are up to date and accurate so that their students have the information they need for a seamless transition. Um, and so that was really what, once we had that kind of figured out, then we've moved into next steps in the design work. |
| 0:12:03.1 | 55.8s | Loida González Utley | You mentioned um gaps, and, and I kinda wanna, kinda wanna talk about that for a second. Those um gaps in between the community college and the university, common in a lot of states, right? So, so let's just backtrack for a second. We've, we've learned um from previous episodes, Texas has a common core numbering system. We just recorded. And learned from Transfer Virginia. We know that that that's an initiative um that that a that everybody in higher education in Virginia just took on themselves. Um, and then now we're listening to a curriculum um from a community college system and a university system. Changing the curriculum and aligning that is no easy task. I mean, so, so one question that I have is, did, did that mean that the university had to realign the coding of the classes so that they could be the same? |
| 0:12:59.19 | 116.2s | Jami Dawkins | So not for, not for this work, um, our North here, so one thing that's interesting about North Carolina is our North Carolina Community College system have common course numbering amongst all the 58 community colleges. They also have a curriculum standard for the associate arts and associate in Science, so our universities. Are with this project are responsible for helping students identify the appropriate community college courses that align with their their majors with their the programs at the university and it's a little bit easier because the associate in arts and associate in Science pretty much look the same. At all the 58 community colleges and the course courses that they will take within the associate arts and associate in Science are the same in all the community colleges. So that is one thing um that that helped make this project a little easier is that all those 58 are in alignment in terms of their curriculum and their course offerings. Our universities are, are not in that same it are not set up that same way, um, so that's one of the unique features. It didn't require um adjusting of curriculum on either side for for either sector but it it did require um everyone to start looking at equivalencies a lot closer and making sure they're identifying the community college courses not only that they want for their major but that are also applicable. That associate degree completion because we want the students finishing out those associate's degrees we know that research shows that students are far more successful upon transferring and so um it required not necessarily changes to curriculum but a deep dive into equivalencies, um, expanding knowledge on the community college partners in our state, um, and being really intentional about recommendations the universities were making for community college students. |
| 0:14:55.96 | 60.0s | Loida González Utley | So usually in an associate's degree, um, as I understand it, and please correct me if it's different in in North Carolina, um usually there is a common core requirement and then lower level um requirements for the core of that, that are, you know, for the core of that program that are usually in sequential order. Some of the common um Uh, some of the threads and blogs that I have read, you know, in the past about students across the state is that there is little to no commonality. So, um, you know, In an English literature class, maybe could be perceived that it could be accepted, but then a university hesitates to accept it because of rigor and so there's a consistent battle of like substitutions, like can these be substituted for this or, you know, um, if we consider a core at a community college, can the university um, consider it a core? Did you guys, what was your experience with that? Did you all come across those specific challenges? |
| 0:15:56.28 | 58.2s | Eric Fotheringham | Yeah, for sure. And, and, and one of the great things about this process is that um we have taken extensive notes. I say we mostly Jami, but, but like, and but we, we talk constantly among, amongst ourselves within our office and certainly with the, with the university and the community colleges of all these things that we're learning that are surfacing. Uh, through this process and, and some of those things are, you know, how, how do you, how do you evaluate courses? Do you, are you, if you go with like the AACRAO recommendation of 70% overlap, what does 70% mean when you're looking at, you know, and, and what is, what if it's 67%? What the heck does that mean? You know, and like how do you, how do you actually go through that process and who owns that process on the campus, which of course, for us. 16 different flavors, right? It's, it's like, everybody doing it differently, which adds to a lot of the beauty of this whole |
| 0:16:55.92 | 53.3s | Jami Dawkins | everything. How often is that is that taking place on the campuses too? So not who's responsible for it, but how often, you know, um, our comprehensive articulation agreement has been. Around for a long time and in the last 10 years have had added, you know, additional um protections to students but there's also been changes on our campuses in the last 10 years. So when these 400 or so guaranteed transferable courses came about 10 years ago, how long has it been since the campuses looked at those equivalencies and are we ensuring that we're awarded. we we're accepting them. We know the universities are accepting them, but are we awarding the most appropriate and applicable credit for those courses and not intentionally it's not happening. It may just be because it hasn't been looked at for a while. Things have a lot of stuff has changed in the last 10 years since our CAA, our comprehensive articulation agreement went through this revision, so. |
| 0:17:49.91 | 46.9s | Loida González Utley | Well, and, and in terms of transfer, um, and, and again, this is, this could be situational by state, um, transfer just kind of popped up during COVID more than it ever did. I, I mean, it really got a spotlight. it got people's attention, um, you know, in different areas because of the enrollment decline and how to make up the enrollment decline. I, we know that um, National Student Clearing House and the Aspen Institute had been tracking trends for 6 years. New figures came out. So, you know, those are, those are valid concerns and questions, Jami, like this has been around and this articulation agreement has been around for 10 years, like who kept up with it and, and more importantly, you know, why did we decide to do it now? Like, why have we waited for such a long time to really pay so much attention to transfer students? |
| 0:18:37.32 | 424.8s | Eric Fotheringham | Yeah, I, I, I think it's one of the things that, that I have that uh the way that I think about this is, um, You know, it, I mean, to your point, right? Transfer is not new. You've been transferring for a long time. Um, what's different now? Like what, like, how is it just, uh, attention span has shifted? Is it, you know, the demographics or the, or the, um, the backgrounds or the habits of the patterns of the students have changed? The thing that, that where I just kind of keep going back in, in my mind is there have been a lot of really smart, really talented people who have been working on transfers for a really long time. So maybe the solution is not. Based on efforts or passion or I mean certainly not intelligence, right? I mean like if if this if this was easy to solve this would have been solved a long time ago and we'd be at a at a different place. So if it's not, if, if it's not that, what could it be and, and without any answers I still don't have all the answers but one of the thing or a few of the things that came out of this was. The the structures. needed fixing and not just. Not just like a little piece here and a piece there and, and for whatever reason, I've probably heard somebody else say this recently, but this has been in my mind. I've been using it for the last couple of weeks that I'll have a different phrase next week whatever but it's like, are we putting band-aids on something when surgery is necessary and, and as we were unpacking this, it started off with let's find the right band-aids. But maybe it, maybe we needed some surgery. And, and that was that was kind of a. I mean, for some people, I think it was revelatory and I think for Jami and I, um, it was exciting because it was like, OK, we, we don't just want to do these one off little pieces of let's tweak this and let's tweak this and, and what we were able to do, if you don't mind, I just kind of like geek out a little bit on like what we've been doing like our system has been doing for a little while. We've like uh I think 989 years ago, um our system office set up what we call student data warehouse. And so what it is is that we live in the cloud or it lives in the cloud we tap into all of our institutional SIS systems with Banner and PeopleSoft, and we basically identify all of these different data elements that we wanna, that that we wanna play and part of it is certainly to, to, to do a better job of collecting data, but also it was so much, such a huge burden on the campuses to say, oh we have this question. Can each of you, all 16 IR offices run this or registrars pull this, send it in, we'll read it in SIS and they do or data or whatever and do something else. And so it was like, well, maybe there's just some questions that we could answer internally and as that got built and it kind of got expanded, start saying, well, let's, what about comparing some of these courses or some of these, these activities that are happening. And uh when, when our, our current president, President Hans, when he came. He was actually president of the community college system in North Carolina. And came over and became president of the UNC system, so he calls himself the transfer president if if like whatever leaps that we're gonna make in the transfer policy and practice world is gonna happen under his watch because this is, this is very important for him. One of the first things he did was he came up with um or he, he established a policy for a common numbering system which was not the entire catalog. It was not for everything and the institutions did not need to change their numbering system. What we did is we picked a bunch of core courses that were the major transfer courses between the community colleges and the universities and then universities and universities. And looked at those equivalencies behind the scenes and created like an equivalency matrix. So if English 101 is here, English 1100, English 105, and whatever it was, they all, all the institutions. Kind of identified those so that was like a sample of what could be done behind the scenes with equivalencies and then we built a military, something very similar for military to say and instead of looking at first aid courses, it was, well what's on the JST? What are, what, what levels of, you know, what, what training do you have and what courses. Can be given for that and then what would that look like? So we had and, and I say we, uh, the RIT team like our IT team, the project management team, like they are just, they are rock stars in this and when we approach them with this idea, we said, look, we know there's this data mark where we're tapping into everything. We've also through all this other work, you've accessed all of the equivalency tables at the universities. So, is there a way to pull all of this together? And be able to, and this what Jami was talking about earlier, for the users, instead of giving a blank slate. Right, you almost, you, you're presenting them with options and giving them a red pen to edit. And the buy-in and the utility of that is completely different. And, and so to be able to kind of have that progress and sort of the comfort level increase with uh with data. And, and then also the, I mean you, you talk about how like there's been an increased intention on on transfer we have tried to be very intentional with our discussions in this within the system to say, you know, look, we all these efforts on adult learners, right? And we've had wonderful support from the Lumina Foundation, uh John M. Belk can down a lot of folks say 89% of our students who are flagged as adult learners, 89% are transfers. We know that, right? I mean that that makes sense, right? I mean, like they, they've most likely been to more than one are military students by definition. They have, they have the JST, they're trying to transfer some of that credit. So we sort of like try to pull this together to say, look, this is This, we, we may call them different, but their, their circumstances, their situations are very similar. They earned the or else they want to bring it here. We should tell them what that looks like as they're making plans. And so that was uh that was a huge tangent. I'm sorry, but like, but I think to me it's, it's such a, we, we wouldn't be able to do what we did without all that other work, but also. It, it, it allowed like we didn't have to have a very long conversation with the universities to get to that concept because they understood, oh we understand equivalencies. Oh wait, we know that there's all these other equivalency projects. What does that look like? And, and one of our, I mean, that was a huge, a huge um huge amount of work to do, but then also It was like it, how, how do we do that and the work is one thing, but how do we get it so the students. Actually find it useful right because that's that's a very different, very different outcome yeah accurate, but if the students, if it doesn't mean anything to them or it doesn't look like it's something they want to use, it's, it's, it's just, it's just wasted paper or PDFs or. |
| 0:25:42.76 | 85.8s | Jami Dawkins | Yeah, and and your question of why now that's exactly why now because North Carolina has done so much work in the equivalency space we have done so many great things with identifying and clarifying equivalencies that is something that our state does really, really well. Our universities have equivalency databases that are all student facing, um, we have these system wide databases that the UNC systems office has created that equivalency data, that equivalency information is a. Alive and well and good now on this project was designed to take that equivalency work and take it one step further to help students not only identify transferable coursework but applicable coursework. We don't want them just taking any transferable courses. We want them taking transferable courses that are applicable towards degree completion, both associate and bachelor degrees. So all of that equivalency work that's taken place over the last several years. Has has really led us to a place where we can now say great we've got the equivalency stuff we feel pretty good about that now let's start helping students figure out transferability and applicability so that they're taking and the most important items they're maximizing their time at the community college they're coming with prepared um with transcripts that are reflective of intentional coursework that will support them in their education and endeavors. |
| 0:27:08.80 | 90.6s | Loida González Utley | See, now y'all are speaking my love language at this point. You, you've hit on it, on this a lot in, in, in, in all transfer conversations, they always lead to this point. What we understand and know of higher education is not what the student understands and knows of higher education. In fact, We work so much in this space that we tend to use terms like BDP and, and, and I've worked in institutions where it's not BDP but it's other things. What does that even mean? Like, you, you know, like, go give, go tell a student here's a BDP around. random person on the street, they don't know what that is. And so there's all these assumptions that we have to um myth bust and transfer because they are untrue. One of them, and I've mentioned this before, but one of the very first things when I started in the transfer arena, um, I met a professional that said, oh, transfer is easy, students have already gone to a community college, they already know everything. You kind of just put everything online and they, they can figure it out because they've already been in higher education. And gosh, at that time, I was like, oh, really? That is cool. And then like a few months later when I really figured out that that was very untrue. I mean, oh my gosh, I was mortified. um student perspectives, they don't even know what trends for what degree uh plans are. Yeah, would you, would you say that is true of students in the North Carolina system? |
| 0:28:40.5 | 161.3s | Eric Fotheringham | I would, I would say for the most part, and, and I just, just to To, I mean to answer this, but also just to hit on something that Jami said earlier. So this is when Jami used this phrase with me, like this is our mantra or our t-shirt or something, um, it's, we, we are really good with the transferability of credit in North Carolina, right? We have a lot of articulation agreements. Like, yes, but it's the applicability to the major we and, and that is and it, and that's another tricky thing with the language, right? I mean, it's, it's a cute thing to say because it's, you know, it's a nice phrase and stuff, but like also. From the, these, these two, you know, perspectives of transfer we talked about of the university side and the student advisory side. We have like on the university side creating these plans or talking about transfer we are talking about transferability and the user, the student and the advisor just right without even without using these words they are thinking about applicability and so then you have different expectations and then and you get to, you know, you, you earn the degree or you transfer before the degree but you go to the university, you think you have 30 or 45 or 60 credits. And then you find out you don't, and more often than not, you don't find that out until past the ad drop deadline, and maybe you're already taking a class that you didn't need to take, right? So it's just almost immediately. With with zero ill intent. Immediately there's a bad taste and it sours the relationship. And so when the student does need something and they do need help, there might be that hesitation to say, oh, I don't know they, they kind of felt like kind of felt like I didn't get all the things straight, you know, for like uh upfront and, and it's, it's, it is so. To me, the the relationship. And the way that the student feels about the institution should be a real motivator for their work to go forward. And I, I want students to be successful because of some of the things that we do. And sometimes I wonder how many are successful in spite of what we do. And, and they just, they're just diligent and just are willing to push forward and are strong advocates for themselves and and and I, I just, it's, we want to another something that our president has said before like I want like we want students to struggle with calculus or with biology or economics or English literature we don't want them to become experts in articulation agreements, right? That's our job and let them focus on the stuff that they need to focus on. |
| 0:31:21.60 | 131.4s | Loida González Utley | And I love that you said that, Eric, because, um, more often than not, um, I was in some professional development, I can't even remember which one it was, but they posed a question of, are we putting this problem on the student? You know, are we the problem, are we the one creating the barriers for transfer students, or are we just saying it's a student? They don't know, they haven't looked for it, they haven't researched it, like, maybe we do put so much on the student, you know, before, before transfer was um A vivid conversation, it was like, it's on the website. You can find it on the website. You can find transfer guides on the website, you can find agreements on the website. I mean, listen, what is an articulation agreement, a legal document actually mean to a student trying to transfer nothing, absolutely nothing. And so, in hearing how proactive you all are being and you have been for transfer, I mean, and and then on top of that, the buying, it look, it almost seems like you didn't have to work too hard on that buying, that is incredible. From from somebody who has been trying to explain transfer to maybe people that don't know enough or haven't, you know, delved enough into the weeds of transfer, getting buy-in is hard because most of the time, transfer students are not the majority population at an institution. They are very, very, very small piece, and because they are, they are typically often. Overlooked or, you know, not enough information, and I think, I think, um, I'm curious to know what what it's like in your system, but transfer professionals, um, in general, that we struggle with that, you know, there's a struggle of resources, um, getting somebody to write a a pathway, you know, to, to write multiple pathways requires resources and time and information and, and, you know, that is one of the biggest struggles, so. Um, kudos to you all, and also, like, walk us through, um, kind of the implementation part and, you know, that whole buy-in and, and, and how this really started to be, um, take action. |
| 0:33:33.81 | 288.8s | Jami Dawkins | Yeah, I think there's a lot that that feeds into that um Eric and I have been in the transfer space as we mentioned for a number of years so when we tackled this project we were working with folks that we have been working with for a while and, and that certainly helped um I think we would be remiss to say that that didn't help, um, but the buying of our campuses was incredible and it was despite. An extraordinary amount of work that this project took. Um, so I'll paint a picture for you, um. In the year before we started this project, I did a quick calculation of how many BDPs or bachelor degree plans they were out there, um, and that, and as it stands, the, the, our comprehensive articulation agreement requires campuses to have one BDP per major that they have. Um, now this is tricky because we have majors that have concentrations and so the community college recommendations for different concentration could look different. So it's not just like, oh, we offer X number of majors across the state, so that's how many BDPs there should be. Um, we, in that, in that initial look, we had some campuses that had like 200+ BDPs posted, but they only offered 50 majors and so we didn't really have, and we had some campuses that hardly had any BDPs posted because they had had a change of turnover. In their transfer services and that kind of thing. So we didn't really have a, a good starting point. We didn't really know like a number. So when we talk about that 1400 being published, that's it that's pretty remarkable because we didn't even really have a concrete baseline to work off of. The other thing I'll mention about that is that we asked the campus has had known about this for a number of months leading up to us actually putting it on their plate, if you will, um, but we handed them access to start building these in January. They had over 1300 built by June 1 and almost 1400 on July 1. So when we talk about buying, I'm talking about 15 individual campuses with 15 different approaches to this with transfer professionals in all different spaces on their campuses coming together, working alongside myself and our development team to make this a reality. That's like that is just a remarkable buy in and it and it stems from um obviously our agreement is huge here in the state of North Carolina and we have a lot of transfer students pursuing transfer pathways through this comprehensive articulation agreement. Our universities know that that is a great enrollment pipeline for them, but they also. They're not naive to think that those students aren't running into red tape and issues. And so for the last 10 years when it's come to the BDPs, they've been up to their own devices to do this and it's been. Challenging for them because they haven't had a ton of guidance and the students have been have have experienced challenges on the user end because of the same thing and so some of that buying stemmed from like we had a plan we had, we developed a system for them that made this very significantly easier than they had been to build these um the other buy-in was that it was gonna be really hard this initial time of. Building it, but from now on, they just have to make annual updates. They don't have to build anything in the future unless they add new majors, and that was a huge buy-in or selling point for the universities because now they had a formal system they knew it was gonna be a big undertaking this year getting these built, but now as they look ahead to making updates, they're just making a quick update to what they've already built and in some cases they may not have updates to it. They may not. The curriculum changes and that kind of thing so we streamlined a process that had lived in and still does live in various places on the campus, um, we've given them essentially an interactive form to fill out in order to build these that ties in to their equivalency databases and is like a series of drop downs so that they're not having to look up equivalencies for their campus they're just saying yeah we know we want. English 111 from the community college and our system automatically identifies its equivalency for them um so it took that work out for them so not only did it build a system that they could modify in the future and ensure these are regularly updated, but it took out a lot of the legwork on the initial building too because of the technology that's built into the process so that buy in really stemmed from a forward thinking perspective of, yeah, we know it's gonna be a lot right now but this is gonna make this process. So easy. We are going to have no issue having updated resources available for students looking ahead. And that was really powerful, I think for our campuses, um, and really, really drove that, that buy in. |
| 0:38:23.19 | 266.6s | Eric Fotheringham | And we had a, a specific, um, you know, approach or like the theory of change for this was and, and I'm, I'm sure folks that are listening like you this probably sounds very familiar. There, there are a lot of things and it's very appropriate at times to send messages to the provosts. And, and it, you know, or the chancellor or whatever and, and have it, have it trickle down in, you know, each, each, each university is different and have different pipelines and stuff, and that's appropriate at times. We did not feel that what Jami just describing like the amount of work and everything. That the best way for that to happen would be for our colleagues that we work with very closely all over the state uh to hear about this uh in a memo and, and not necessarily from us and so we we in a lot of ways we kind of flipped what often happens right? and again it's not a judgment call on any other processes, but this was we knew who was gonna do the work and we wanted to make sure as part of the process that Jami described earlier, right, of all the focus groups and all the discussions. We knew that they weren't happy with the previous system. So help us figure out what's gonna work better and with zero expectations, we didn't care what it looked like we didn't care what the sections were, we, none of that. We just wanted to make something that was gonna be useful and helpful. And so to start there and then you and then you build up excitement, right? And, and, and the energy and people are excited for this with all the other things that Jami mentioned as far as the, the future and, and how things are gonna go in the future, you know, that's That is huge cause then instead of asking senior leadership that have 10,000 things to do, instead of asking them to coordinate action on their campus, we're, we're, we're, we were giving them updates. And, and that's, um, at least the way things have been more recently in our system, um, and I'm sure again like this at a lot of universities, the, the provos were happy to get updates and not have to I'm sure how to organize or how to do things and it um and so that just that really really helps and that just for again for maybe some of our registrar friends were listening just to hit again what Jami said, the way this was set up. And Jami created these templates and stuff, so you have a section for, you know, natural sciences. That's, that's, there's a requirement on the Associate of Arts, associate of Sciences. The person at the university, like they sign in, so they know what university they're coming from, they choose the course, they choose biology 150. The, the most frequent course that transfers or their preferred transfer equivalency pops up automatically. I mean, that's, that's how it is. So I mean you, you take this process of somebody having to start from scratch, oftentimes it with an Excel spreadsheet and create some design. All they had to do was pick the course and their equivalency would pop up. If they wanted it to be something else. They could, they could overwrite that and do something else. But that is, I mean, besides just the buy-in, right, to be able to design and that was something that are, again, just kind of based on um the, the history and what's been done previously. I mean, that is That's, that's huge and tremendous and it, and it really connects a lot of um the different pieces and it uh one of the things maybe just to kind of like round this out, one of the things that was part of our initial, so what, what came out of a lot of these focus groups was students didn't know where to find them. And sometimes it was, it was well advertised. It was, it was, it was on a, on the main transfer page, sometimes it was buried, sometimes it's in the course catalog. And so you, not only did they look different, but you had to go to all these different places. And so, what the, what the procedure, the process is now, and part of this is gonna be kind of changing our policies and our regulations to align a lot of this is that The official um version. Is gonna live on a central. Institution agnostic website. So that someone, I always say if, if, if someone wants to go to UNC Wilmington. They know how to find UNCW.edu and you is gonna have, and I'm not picking on them, they're wonderful. Stephanie, if you're listening, you know you're one of my favorite transfer people out there, |
| 0:42:51.35 | 0.1s | Jami Dawkins | you know, |
| 0:42:51.66 | 106.8s | Eric Fotheringham | I'm saying it's good and they're gonna have all these listed and they're gonna have, you know, but it's linked back to the central site that's CFNc.org/transfer guides. And CFNC is the, it's a college for North Carolina uh foundation. They, they have traditionally focused on helping high school students get to college and so now we're helping them build out their transfer place. But this is, if somebody just says, I want to transfer. From a community college to a UNC institution. You either go to 16 websites or you can go to this and you can choose the you, you can search by the university, you can search by the major, we're gonna increase and enhance the search features so it, it, it can, it can pull in even more, but that to me was huge because there are those who know very clearly where they wanna go. I don't think that's the majority of students anymore. I think they wanna go because they want to major in something, but also major in graduation. So they have a topic, but they want to figure out how to get there quickly. And, and so if, if they can then pull up 6 different versions of a transfer pathway, um, in English literature. They're gonna be able to compare apples to apples and get a better sense. In one spot as opposed to, you know, having to, to search all over the place and that's just kind of again like our fundamental approach has been. Let's simplify the things that should not be difficult and then let the hard decisions be their individual path and their you know, and their choices and things, uh, so and that's, and we, we saw, we just recently saw some some of the, the, the web traffic to, to CFNC I mean it July 1 when this launched, I mean it, it spiked. |
| 0:44:38.75 | 16.5s | Loida González Utley | It's I was just going to ask that metrics because like we, we, OK, we've worked with the transfer student, you know how meaningful this is, right, but If you, that's not justifiable enough for initiatives and stuff like that. So metrics, what are you measuring? How are you measuring? |
| 0:44:55.93 | 252.3s | Jami Dawkins | We're, we're transparently trying to still figure some of that out, but there, there are a few things that we're looking at, and metrics are on multiple sides of this process, right, because this, this project is. What involved creating something for our university to build the resources to build one resource resource per major so there's that piece of the project and then there's also the student facing version the actual resources student uses and metrics around that, um, so I think it's easier for us to talk about the metrics around like the student and what they're going to use so we at this point what we're hoping to look at are um. Obviously how students are getting to the transfer guides, are they getting to it from a university's website or are they going to our new resource on CFNC.org/transfer guides? So that's a big thing, um, we're, we're looking at where in our state they're looking like who is using them within the state. There's some interests on that that we hope to look at. Um, we wanna get a better idea of like. Comparison, so if a user is clicking on one transfer guide and then clicking on another transfer guide at a different institution, we wanna look at some of those comparisons. So that's a big part of it. Those are some metrics that we're going to be exploring. Um, we've never historically had a way to know how often transfer guides were used or viewed, um, because they. Always live solely on individual institution websites and so the kids still have them posted um but we're now gonna have this this database where they live and we'll be able to track some of that usage a little bit more look at what common majors are looked at across the system um look at just some of those things that. It's really hard to get into when things are living on 16 individual university websites, um, so that's a really exciting thing that some metrics that we're hoping to use, um, and to help fuel the project going forward because this project we started, I have no, uh, it's hard for me to even say this, but starting like this 1400 is just, just the surface we. We have additional agreements that we're going to be expanding this project to um so we know there's more to come and we started with our largest but um but so I think that getting some idea in that so that we can make informed decisions about broadening the project is really really important and we've just never had that data um we're also going to be looking at um. Some commonalities among the transfer guides, so these have been very individualized resources, um, historically by the campuses, um, but now we have a whole database and we can start looking at, OK, if there are 14 accounting programs across the state, how many common community college courses are being recommended by those 14 universities? Is there a common. Common community college course recommendations for all of our accounting programs in the state of North Carolina. So we're gonna have that data now because all that data lives in the database we've built, um, that the universities used to build the transfer guides and that we then use to publish forward facing for students. Um, so there's some really exciting metrics, um, but so far since July 1, Eric's gonna laugh at me when I say that this, but the metrics we have is that we're worldwide, um, we have had. We have had folks from all from other countries um looking at these resources um the the volume um that CFNC saw uh an increase was really impressive. uh, CFNC uh houses our main database of the transfer guides. Um, they've always had transfer information on there, but with this project we've been able to really develop that, that space on CFMC and, uh, this has. I think we had something that showed like an increase of 300% um on that one transfer space of CFNC between April and July um so when these went live in July, so that is really exciting and um it really fuels, fuels the fire to keep, to keep going and to see what else we can learn now that we have some of this information centralized, streamlined and easier for students to access. |
| 0:49:08.52 | 6.4s | Loida González Utley | So basically what you're saying is you're creating magic in North Carolina because that's what that's exactly what it sounds like. |
| 0:49:15.80 | 8.6s | Eric Fotheringham | Well, we hope so, but and I do love the fact that we're worldwide. I'm not overly concerned that they're probably hackers. But just that you know we're on, we're on their radar too. |
| 0:49:24.73 | 9.1s | Jami Dawkins | I believe that I'm living and breathing that we are worldwide. I have been, I've been, I have been riding that high now for about 2 weeks since I found out. So, um, |
| 0:49:34.63 | 132.9s | Eric Fotheringham | yeah, no, it's good, see, and the other thing too is, so one thing that's exciting about this, so that there are those metrics as far as the, the, the usage. The, the, the part that is gonna be um might be a little bit more nebulous that it it might not necessarily be the might fall into the correlation is not causation kind of idea but you know, so we have a lot of data, the community colleges have a lot of data together our systems work pretty well in sharing data and so we've, we've done a good job of, of identifying, you know, the, the, the, the, the number of students who come our way, right? And who transfer and sort of their time to degree, um. We just have started looking at the uh the the credit loss. So when students earn a degree and they are enrolled here, what's that average credit loss? So one theory would be if there's greater usage of the transfer guides, there would be fewer, uh, you know, there's gonna be less credit loss. Also, we're able to look at how that credit is brought in. So is it brought in as a 1 to 1 course equivalency or is it? Did you think it was, but the university actually uh brought it in as an elective, right? And so we're part of that is we're gonna, we're, we're, we're gonna put eyes on that and we're gonna look at that. So I think we're, we're hoping that we can reduce credit loss, reduce time to degree, and I would say those two together if we're doing that. Um, we would, you know, theoretically, yeah, I think it's a pretty strong theory that we reduce the, the, the cost for students, right, because they're getting out quicker. Um, so it's, it's, we're hoping that the trends will show that these tools are, are helping students. I mean, that's why I was created in the first place. That's the, that's the idea that the theory is you follow these. The universities are saying you will get here, you will get out faster, and you'll, and you're gonna be, you're gonna be in a better spot to progress quickly. So that's what, so we're gonna like all the things that Jami mentioned and then hopefully as, as the data starts coming in, we will see students come in hopefully also an uptick. And students who earned the degree before they transfer, you know, like black hole like I don't know what's gonna happen. Let's just get over there sooner, |
| 0:51:47.68 | 38.8s | Jami Dawkins | yeah, and our agreement awards them great protection, so the, the this project not only um. Kind of bridges the gap between transferability and applicability, but it is, it's a promotion it promotes it encourages associate degree completion um that leads to bachelor degree completion so that all all parties involved are coming out with credentials and meaningful credentials and. Meaningful credit, um, and so I think that that is one that I think if we had to identify our biggest hope that's, that's probably one of them is that we see an uptake in transfer students who earn the associate degree and then for choose to further their education at the UNC institution. |
| 0:52:27.33 | 78.7s | Loida González Utley | That is wonderful, and I am excited to see what kind of data you guys will collect in a year or two years and hopefully, please put it out there in the world so that we could see it. I will be DMing you all on LinkedIn, like, hey, what's on July of 2025, what's going on with this data showing? No, it's really exciting. I, I mean thank you I think you all hit on, you're doing a great job and obviously hit on the needs of students and this is what their needs are, you know, gone are the days where we can. Put some savvy little app on the website and say, here, figure out how your classes are gonna transfer on their own. Um, kudos too. I, if you see a hotspot from Killeen, Texas, that was me looking at your at your website and your transfer guides. Uh, they're really well organized, um, and the transfer guide itself offers that first part some explanation of, of the guide and the coursework, and that's, that's goes back to the transferability applicability, um, kind of conversation like You know, a degree plan, you just see core numbers and sequences, but don't really understand kind of what it is. And so I think that that those explanations that y'all are putting in there allows the student to understand the significance of the coursework as it relates to their um degree plan or the ultimate goal to graduation. |
| 0:53:46.55 | 54.9s | Eric Fotheringham | And, and that just in going back to the very beginning of this. Jami's discussions with students. When you, if, if anybody looks at, if you go to the website CFNc.org/transfer guys, I feel like we're trying to sell it there and like there's no ads or anything, don't worry about it. I just want everybody to go there. But when you, when you pull, when you pull it up, that layout is what the students want. They were, they were very clear in the order and the sequence. So that, that was also very, very important to us that it was, this was, this is for them. We don't care how somebody else wants it that we organize this. What do you want to know first and then what do you want to know second and then what's the extra stuff and in most cases, honestly, what the transfer professionals and what we thought was gonna be the best layout was completely opposite and that's, you know, I mean. Of course it is. Eric, |
| 0:54:41.51 | 9.4s | Loida González Utley | I love that you said that because time and time again people are like, what's the magic sauce to transfer? And I just turned around and I'm like, have you talked to your transfer students? |
| 0:54:51.63 | 81.1s | Jami Dawkins | Yes, and the design is with them, the design is, I will, I'll be honest with you, we, we, we interviewed and, and did these focus groups with these three different groups with the transfer professionals at the community college, with the university transfer professionals, and then with the students. And we were very transparent with all the folks that were involved in this project that the design of the resource we were listening to the students because our professionals on both sides, they also had opinions about it, but what had to drive this work for this work to be successful and meaningful, we've gotta listen to the students we've gotta make the resource one that. They feel confident in using and they feel confident in that they're understanding the information and ultimately that they feel confident in the coursework they're selecting is going to prepare them for their intended transfer and so um when you look at the design of the transfer guide that was all student feedback that was all um consistent to feedback that. Despite multiple, multiple feedback groups that we did and and um focus groups that we did, we took that that was what we heard and that is what drove the design, um, and I think that that is something that this product did really, really well was remembering who the end user was remembering the why behind the project, um, and, and our design is a is a reflection of that. |
| 0:56:13.19 | 61.0s | Loida González Utley | And we know that when we listen to students and we allow that their voices to drive our processes, we're not gonna fail. They will tell us exactly what what they need. Um, this is, this is, I can't thank you enough. I've learned so much from you all and your passion just, I can, I can feel it all the way to Texas. Um, um, Eric Eric and I exchange email and, and then I don't know what I said and he said, You're speaking my love language and I'm like, I don't know, you don't speak my language too. There, there is, um. You know, I'm, I'm equally passionate about transfer, which is the reason why, you know, we have Transfer Tea in hopes to educate, right, and share some of the things that have worked to maybe in those um states or institutions or in your case systems that may be wanting to improve their transfer practices, but not necessarily knowing where to start, um, from the beginning. So thank you for sharing all of this. We're gonna have to do a follow-up episode in a year. I just feel like we're gonna have to. Um, and any anything else that you'll want to mention? |
| 0:57:15.52 | 69.8s | Jami Dawkins | I would just say for folks out there that are are wanting to to tackle something like this um I I encourage you to think about doing something that um that makes the process easy for um creators but is fueled by the user and, and I think that us having that mindset and building out the templates that took out the guessing of what uh you associate degree requires that a university just doesn't normally know about. It took that template took that out and then it built in their equivalency so that they were simply just making selections and putting in important transfer information that that allowed for the buy-in that allowed for the passion um for campuses to participate in this and then taking that and just designing something with the user with the student in mind um I think that those are the two things that that have really fostered success here and I would encourage other folks to just like you said. Listen to the students, um, and bridge those gaps, bridge the gaps between the students and our higher ed folks that have the knowledge that just need some help in getting that knowledge, um, in a way that it makes sense to our students. |
| 0:58:25.80 | 149.4s | Eric Fotheringham | Yeah, and I would, I would just say that the two things of view this as a, uh, product, not a project. And also make sure that, and, and, and we're lucky, I mean, we're a team of two that we can split these responsibilities but there absolutely has to be 360 degree communication. And when I say product not project, this, there was, there was a start date, but we don't view this as like an end date of like, oh, July 1, there, this is version 1.0 and just like a product, we're gonna, we're gonna, the 2.0 and, and with the communication, certainly with students, certainly with institutions and stuff, but Yeah, I mean, Jami was out on the road. I mean she was doing, she did conferences, she would go and she's still doing presentations for individual community colleges and universities, and, and, and there's a lot of those kind of discussions, but then also. Talking with our senior leaders and other leaders, other, well, everyone else to say, again, this is not a one and done type of project. This is alive and this is living, and this is what it's gonna look like. On July 1, we might tweak some things and, and, and, and get a rest a little bit, let the semester start in August and then September, we're right back at it and we're figuring out what to do for, for year two and to be able to have the, the support of our senior leadership, right, but then to be able to share that out so nobody is surprised at the different steps along the way and that, that builds excitement, it builds buy-in, but it builds a lot of excitement. Which was exactly what transfer students need is they need to know. That The place where they're gonna send their tuition check is invested in them and and and they're not just gonna be lost and, and that this is one of those things that I think I hope the transfer students, I hope they I hope they never, if they don't know they're part of the UNC system, that's fine. And I think most people don't even know we have a system. And if they don't know what BPs were before, that's what if, if the only thing that transfer students know from now from like going forward is that there's this great website and it's easily easy to compare, like that's fine. And Jami and I don't need to, nobody needs to know our name and we'll just keep working on version 2 and then version 3. And that's, that to me is, is I think what's um It's just, it's, it's, we've been very fortunate and, and I think it's, I'm really, really hopeful for how this is gonna help students uh and, and advisors, right? And on both sides of the, of the transfer um ecosystem. |
| 1:00:56.37 | 12.3s | Loida González Utley | Jami, Eric, thank you so much for your time, but also for your very valuable contribution to the world of transfer and for the knowledge that you have added to our field and our profession. We appreciate you. |
| 1:01:09.65 | 1.6s | Jami Dawkins | Thanks for having us. |
| 1:01:19.17 | 51.7s | Loida González Utley | For more information on the University of North Carolina system and their transfer initiatives, visit www.northcarolina.edu. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast so that you can be alerted of our episodes as they become available. You won't want to miss out. We would greatly appreciate that you share and follow our other AACRAO podcasts as well. They are for the record, a registrar podcast, admitted an admissions podcast, and He, higher education and real diversity. Lastly, if you are interested in being a guest in this podcast to share your transfer expertise or you have some topic ideas for us or would like to provide some feedback, you can email us at transportee@acro.org. That is all for now. I hope you have enjoyed learning about the UNC system as much as I did. Thank you so much for listening and that's the tea. |