In the fall 2018, we kicked off the planning and development phase of the Transfer Student Initiative by looking at current TWU reports on the transfer student population. For purposes of this initiative, the definition of transfer student is a student who has completed 12 or more semester credit hours post-high school graduation at another institution. Transfer students comprise 53% of our undergraduate enrollment.

After a productive meeting with Institutional Improvement and Data Management, we formed a cross-disciplinary committee to further explore the data. The full committee met twice in the fall to review data and investigate national best practices. Based on our findings, we divided into three subcommittees: Visibility/Transfer IQ, Enrollment & Persistence, and Post-Graduation Success. The topics under consideration include gaining better understanding of transfer students’ experiences of enrolling, connecting and seeking employment. A second focus centers on acknowledging the positive contributions of transfer students to the Texas Woman’s community. The subcommittees will be dedicated for the remainder of the spring semester to research on their assigned areas via focus groups and other data collection. The full committee will convene later in April to share results and develop on our next steps.

For more information, contact initiative champions Barbara Lerner, Ph.D., Lynda Murphy, Ed.D., and Amy O’Keefe.

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Written by the Strategic Plan Design Team