Transfer Nation Talks

Information on Transfer: Faculty Need It Too

• Transfer Nation • Season 5 • Episode 3

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What do faculty really think about transfer students and transfer policies? This episode explores that question through anonymous responses from nearly 4,000 CUNY faculty surveyed in 2021. Dr. Lexa Logue, who led the research, joins host Heather Adams and Emily Kittrell from NISTS to unpack what faculty said when given anonymity to speak candidly. Volunteer readers share direct quotes—some affirming, some negative, and some offering solutions. We examine the data honestly to identify where the system needs to change. Content note: This episode includes blunt language and deficit framing about community college faculty and students.

Special note:
Please help us send a huge THANK YOU to all the amazing volunteers who contributed their time and voices to this episode. You're awesome, and your clips sound fantastic! We couldn't have completed this special project without you. 💙💚💛

Want to read the quotes for yourself?
You can access a PDF of the episode transcript or dive into the full response database linked below. 
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For more information about the publications and resources mentioned during this episode, visit: 

Show Credits
Host | Dr. Heather Adams
Producers | Rhian Waterberg, Emily Kittrell
Sound Editing | Abraham Urias

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SPEAKER_25:

Hello, listeners. Thank you for tuning in. Before we begin this episode, I want to let you know that today's episode includes anonymous faculty quotes about vertical transfer. That is, transferring from a community college associate degree program to a bachelor's degree program. The quotes vary in their tone and their content, but I will tell you, many express negative views about learners and faculty. And the language, frankly, is sometimes blunt. And one quote includes a minor curse word. If you're listening with children in the room or in a public space or anywhere that you can't give it your full attention, you may want to bookmark this episode for a more focused listen at a later time. We're sharing these voices with care because honest data, even when it's uncomfortable, helps us understand the system we're working to improve. We'll be exploring this topic in a series, so stay tuned as we delve deeper into the themes that emerge from today. Welcome to Transfer Talks from Transformation. I'm your host, Heather Adams, founder of Transformation and a lifelong transfer advocate. Here at Transformation and Transfer Talks, we believe that transfer success is everyone's responsibility, no matter your role, title, or department. Today's students and learners, they're mobile, they're diverse, and they're complex. But our systems have not kept up. The results? Too many learners facing hidden barriers, lost credits, and unclear paths. This podcast is about changing that. In each episode, we'll spotlight real conversations with professionals, learners, and partners from across higher education. People you might not think of as transfer folks, but who all play a part in helping learners thrive. So let's break down those silos, challenge assumptions, and reimagine what transfer can be and who is accountable for realizing that success. This is Transfer Talks, and you are right on time. Let's talk transfer. Hello, hello, welcome back to Transformation, where we celebrate every educational and professional path, lift up what works, and tackle the thorny stuff with curiosity and care. I am Heather Adams, and today I am joined by Dr. Lexa Logue, Professor Emerita at City University of New York, or CUNY, as it's sometimes called, and Emily Cottrell from the National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students, or NISTS. Welcome to both of you. Thanks for having us, Heather. Hey, it's great to be here. Many of our listeners may already know this, but one of the most commonly repeated statistics in our field is that about 80% of new community college students want to earn a bachelor's degree or higher. But only 16% typically achieve that goal within six years of transferring. And that percentage is even lower for historically marginalized and minoritized communities. That is a national average, and it may not reflect your specific region or state, but that gap that's devastating. That tells us something is not working. Lexa, you've been studying transfer in New York City for several years. So help us set the stage for today's discussion. For those unfamiliar with CUNY, what makes it an ideal system for transfer research?

SPEAKER_29:

Happy to talk about that, Heather. CUNY is a public system that enrolls about 20,000 new transfer students across 20 very different undergraduate colleges every year. There are seven community colleges with associate degrees, three comprehensive colleges with both associate and bachelor's degrees, and 10 bachelor's colleges with bachelor's degrees and above. And the bachelor's colleges range from selective to very selective. Plus, CUNY has a centralized data system. This all gives us great opportunity to rigorously study and work to improve all kinds of transfer, particularly involving students from underrepresented groups. Over 50% of CUNY students identify as black or Hispanic, with the percentages in the community colleges being somewhat higher than in the bachelor's colleges.

SPEAKER_25:

Got it. Now you've published several fascinating studies, so I'm going to make sure that we link your website in the show notes so folks can learn more. The research we're discussing today focuses on the responses some faculty members provided to three open-ended questions about transfer. Transformation listeners know that I love talking about the role of faculty in transfer, which is why I am super excited for this conversation. Lexa, you conducted the survey in 2021 with your colleague Dr. Vita Rubinwitz, also Professor Emerita at CUNY, and some other colleagues of yours. So high level, tell us about the study and what you were hoping to find.

SPEAKER_29:

Sure. The purposes of the survey were to find out faculty's experience with transfer and transfer students and their views about transfer policies and practices. Almost 4,000 faculty participated in this survey from all 20 CUNY colleges. Some were full-time, some part-time, some were at community colleges, and some were at bachelor's colleges, and they were in all different disciplines. We know that faculty play a vital role in transfer. They advise on transfer, prepare students for transfer, spend significant time with transfers in the classroom, and often influenced whether and how credits transfer. So to better understand what faculty really think about all this, we asked them to respond to three questions. The first one was what they thought associate degree granting community colleges could do differently to better support transfers. The second was what they thought bachelor's degree granting institutions could do differently to better support transfers. And lastly, what else they wanted to tell us about transfer. The survey was anonymous so that unlike in focus groups or interviews, the faculty could tell us exactly what they thought without worrying about someone's disapproval.

SPEAKER_25:

Got it. Perfect. Thank you for that overview. Now I want to make sure to pause here for a second and bring Emily into the conversation. Emily, you are not involved in the study. So how uh did you get connected to this research?

SPEAKER_24:

Yeah, that's a very valid question. The best things about working at NISTS is that I get to connect with so many fantastic practitioners and researchers through our annual conference. So I've been a longtime fan of Lex's work. So when she emailed us say, I have this idea for a podcast, I mean, of course, I jumped at the opportunity to chime in on that. It started as sort of technical support about podcasts and sort of snowballed from there. Because, like you, Heather, I am deeply curious about understanding and supporting faculty's role in transfer. So I'm really thankful that Lexa let me preview this basically gold mine of data. So there are lots of interesting themes to unpack today, but this episode we want to devote to literally hearing from faculty in their own words. We've pulled together a broad collection of statements from the survey and invited volunteers to read them aloud. So these are our actual colleagues who are also committed to transfer. So you might recognize some of the voices, listeners and Heather, you might recognize them. But to reiterate, these are direct quotes from the survey that have been very lightly edited for clarity and anonymity.

SPEAKER_25:

I love it. I cannot wait to see if I can guess who the voices are. But you also forgot to add, Emily, that you are a part of this because you're an amazing podcast producer. And I know from personal experience, as do our listeners. So this is great. Now, to be clear, this is not a representative sample of all faculty everywhere in the world. This is one system, one moment in time, and some of what we'll hear is affirming, and some is genuinely hard to hear.

SPEAKER_24:

That is exactly right. So, of course, we know that there are many faculty champions doing incredible work for transfer across the country. So we're just hoping that by providing this information, we can inspire even more faculty transfer champions.

SPEAKER_29:

But these anonymous responses do reveal assumptions and knowledge gaps that exist in the system. And if we want to support transfer students better, we have to be willing to look at that honestly.

SPEAKER_25:

Absolutely. 100%. All of it matters if we're really serious about change. Luxa, take us into what the faculty respondents told you.

SPEAKER_29:

Okay. Some listeners may not be surprised to learn that concerning transfer, many community college faculty had criticisms about the bachelor's colleges and their faculty. And many bachelor's college faculty had criticisms about the community college, their faculty, and their transferring students. So the following are some typical examples. All the quotes you're going to hear first are from full-time tenured faculty, those who are likely to have the most influence at a college or university. We're going to start with what some community college faculty said, and then we'll see what bachelor's college faculty had to say.

SPEAKER_00:

We literally do everything possible to help our students. Don't put this on us. It is 100% the four-year schools that make this process painful for our students.

SPEAKER_34:

The bachelor's colleges should be more supportive of students and less concerned about their publications.

SPEAKER_26:

The four years have consistently created rules and moved goalposts to offload more and more grunt work, for example, remediation to the community colleges while forcing students to retake classes they've completed at the associates level because it is not high enough quality. Gotta change the four years' perception of the work that community colleges do.

SPEAKER_14:

We community college professors see our students from a strength-based lens. We value the teaching of our community college colleagues, and we agree to and actually sign articulation agreements, honor those agreements once signed, and honor classes that are taught at the community college level. We have all the same qualifications as you do, and we sat in the same graduate courses as you did.

SPEAKER_12:

The bachelor's colleges should stop disdaining community colleges and help provide resources to better align the curriculum.

SPEAKER_22:

A certain CUNY Bachelor's College, which is where most math majors at my college want to go, has not taken most of our department's math major courses, no matter what we do. This is a huge disadvantage for students. There's no mechanism to require them to justify why they do this, or to require them to articulate what would need to be changed in order for them to accept them for credit. Many students thus have to repeat many courses and run out of financial aid. This is a huge source of institutional discrimination that needs to be changed. I'm a mathematician by training, so I respect the fact that the four years are trying to be sure that what students learn is rigorous. But I think the way they measure rigor is riddled with biases, is hugely inconsistent, and inequitable. And there's no common way to discuss what rigor means, to define it, and or to ensure that two-year colleges can always ensure that their courses are accepted for transfer by adhering to certain pre-agreed upon standards of rigor, and that won't be changed on a whim later.

SPEAKER_01:

Most CUNY community college faculty hold doctorates and are experts in their fields. The condescension of faculty at those CUNY senior colleges ultimately harms the students.

SPEAKER_08:

Four-year colleges have a chip on their shoulders and it's hurting students. Many community college faculty have PhDs and do research in their disciplines. Faculty at four-year colleges need to understand that courses at community colleges are just as good as those at four-year schools and accept them rather than make students retake them or have them not count towards a DA or BS degree.

SPEAKER_07:

Take the sticks out of their asses.

SPEAKER_45:

Furthermore, our students have an easier time getting their credits fully transferred to NYU and Columbia than to a certain CUNY Bachelor's College. Personally, I think it's because that bachelor's college has an inferiority complex and they take it out on our students.

SPEAKER_37:

Please work on getting four-year colleges to stop acting superior. We are all CUNY. Encourage departments to cooperate with each other on fast, reasonable articulation agreements and to just generally get to know each other better.

SPEAKER_23:

A certain bachelor's college needs training in anti-racist pedagogies and to stop being so elitist.

SPEAKER_32:

Someone with a real interest in efficiency and fair evaluation of prejudice and CUNY professionalism should sit on the CUNY General Education, that is, the Common Core, committee, and record the discriminatory, dismissive attitude, comments, and reasons behind the rejection of Common Core inclusion from courses coming from community colleges. Oftentimes, Common Core rubrics are completely ignored in favor of personal, biased opinions grounded on the fact that this course comes from a community college.

SPEAKER_31:

We teach courses built to mirror our four-year partners' courses, and still our students are seen as less than and through a deficit lens. The transfer process is ripe with implicit and explicit bias against our community college students and faculty.

SPEAKER_25:

Ooh, wow. Okay, well, you can really hear the frustration and defensiveness of these community college faculty. Are there perceptions of bachelor's colleges fair? Well, let's listen to what some bachelor's college, the full-time tenured faculty had to say about the community colleges curriculum, faculty, and students.

SPEAKER_17:

The community colleges should align their programs with the receiving colleges rather than preparing students for technical jobs.

SPEAKER_42:

Transfer students are consistently underprepared for bachelor's work. Courses at many community colleges are just not equivalent. This is a particular problem when the courses are prerequisites for higher level work.

SPEAKER_13:

Make sure students are aware of the demands of bachelor's level classes. Place them appropriately according to their actual knowledge, preparation, and academic background, regardless of good grades supposedly earned in the prior college, which often don't compare to what they would have gotten in the college they transferred into. Provide tutoring support for the many who find they need it in their new academic environment.

SPEAKER_27:

Reserve the right to deny credit transfer from associate's degree courses that have high grade inflation.

SPEAKER_44:

Community college courses are often graded too generously. Students have no idea of the time needed to succeed in a real college-level course. Students pass writing and math courses without mastery of these basic skills.

SPEAKER_21:

The grades seem so inflated at community colleges, which gives the transfer students a false sense that they're well prepared for upper level courses at a senior college. Some transfer students I have this semester are writing at maybe an eighth-grade level, for example.

SPEAKER_46:

Students show a complete lack of pretension of basic math and geometry skills.

SPEAKER_20:

We should think of the community college's role as a great high school in two years, bringing students to a level where they enter on the level of freshman plus. Like students who took lots of AP courses. An associate's degree is just not the same as the first two years of a bachelor's program. Until we understand this reality, vertical transfer will continue to fail. Given the high school experience of most community college students, they need at least one year and often two years to catch up. The model of two years community college, two years bachelor's college, just does not work, which explains why two community college plus four also does not work. The current system sets up students to fail, and they do.

SPEAKER_18:

Transfer students should do bootcamp-style remedial coursework in their major. Almost all associate's degree students in my department are way behind students who started at my four-year college.

SPEAKER_15:

Students should take our required foundation courses even if they've had the so-called equivalent. They don't cover the same intensive research foundation, which sets them up for problems.

SPEAKER_36:

Allow students to retake courses or have special catch-up courses. The biggest problem is lack of preparation by community colleges. Bring vertical transfers in at the freshman plus level. Plan for three to four years and bachelor's degree program.

SPEAKER_21:

Mentally prepare students for having to redo work at a bachelor's college.

SPEAKER_28:

Vertical transfer students lack a lot of basic training that's hard to make up when they can't take our foundation classes because of so-called equivalents. We need them to redo those courses.

SPEAKER_05:

For specialized majors like music, it is likely that students will have to do another three to four years. Most transfer students only place into Theory 1 and Music History 1. So even when their general education courses are accepted, they must start over in their major area.

SPEAKER_38:

We need better qualified faculty members and associates' degree colleges. Bachelor's colleges should not set students up for failure by just accepting all students. I see so many students without basic skills. No ability to search for scholarly sources, no ability to use a library, no ability to write an essay, no ability to write a bibliography, no ability to take notes or study. Not all students should be compelled to attend bachelor's degree granting colleges. And the colleges need not accept them. It's just setting students up for debt and failure.

SPEAKER_27:

Abandon the idea of transfers as being desirable. Instead, expand the bachelor's colleges so that they have more capacity to provide four-year degrees.

SPEAKER_24:

And here's a counterpoint from a full-time tenured bachelor's degree college faculty member, basically saying what some community college faculty had already pointed out, that a lot of these negative attitudes towards transfer are really about racial bias.

SPEAKER_07:

Please recognize that beneath these conversations is a racial bias against Black and Latinx transfer students and these populations more broadly at CUNY. These racial biases must be addressed.

SPEAKER_25:

Okay, so I don't know about y'all, but I'm having some very visceral and uncomfortable reactions to a lot of these quotes. I mean, talk about deficit framing. Honestly, I I'm feeling a little angry.

SPEAKER_24:

Yeah, I totally agree. I was really tough to sit through, even harder to read through a lot of these responses. But I know for me, it matches what I've heard from transfer staff time and time again that faculty attitudes are one of the biggest barriers to transfer success. The assumptions, the resistance to working across institutions, it's real. And students pick up on it too. With some vertical transfer students, as listeners know, actively hiding where they start in college because they're worried about being judged. Lexa, what went through your mind when you first saw these quotes?

SPEAKER_29:

Well, first I have to say that the negative claims from some of the bachelor's college faculty concerning the preparation and performance of vertical transfer students are not supported by the data. In our extensive CUNY research, roughly 40% of vertical transfer students' GPAs actually go up after transfer. It's also worth noting that the vast majority of vertical transfer students are majoring in liberal arts transfer pathways, not technical programs. Finally, ultimately, the bachelor's colleges decide whom they admit. No one is forcing them to take unqualified students, but these misconceptions persist.

SPEAKER_25:

Okay. So surely the faculty responses to the survey weren't all bad news. We just heard a lot of blame and essentially finger pointing at each other. But what other quotes stuck out to you?

SPEAKER_24:

Yeah, so when I scanned the responses in the database, I have to confess I was quite relieved to see that there were also many faculty, both at community and bachelor's colleges, who were very positive about transfer students and the faculty and colleges of the other sector. Here are some examples from tenured faculty at bachelor's colleges talking about vertical transfer.

SPEAKER_11:

Don't worry, we're a student took classes in the past. Nearly all of our students face challenges and have knowledge gaps. All of them need and deserve support.

SPEAKER_30:

Figure out ways to accept as many credits as possible from the associate degree in order to retain students and ensure graduation.

SPEAKER_10:

Most of the top math majors at my bachelor's college transferred into that bachelor's college. In my experience, vertical transfer is one of the most significant ways in which CUNY lifts people up and supports people who might otherwise not achieve certain academic and subsequent career goals.

SPEAKER_17:

Vertical transfer students are a great asset to any program.

SPEAKER_24:

And interestingly, there were also a lot of part-time or adjunct faculty from the bachelor's colleges who commented positively too. And I actually really love that because I suspect they knowingly or unknowingly interact with a lot of transfer students.

SPEAKER_09:

Faculty must see all their students as capable and not place judgment regarding where they started. Community college students are usually very driven.

SPEAKER_39:

This is perhaps the most important part of our educational system. It essentially means that no matter who you are or what your background is, that there is a path for you.

SPEAKER_16:

I've had great students who transferred from a certain community college. That community college really worked on their essay writing and thinking skills, getting them up to speed on the fundamentals.

SPEAKER_48:

More needs to be done to make these students feel like they've made the right choice in selecting your school. Many transfer students I interact with feel that they've been run around from department to department with few answers. Second to that, but no less important, students must have their credits evaluated as soon as possible. Delays equal wasted time. And time wasted is money wasted for much of our student population. And lastly, some forbearance with what transfers slash is considered equivalent to bachelor's coursework. Repeating classes also waste time and money.

SPEAKER_04:

It's important for all of us to recognize the vast differences among our transfer students. Some of the most extraordinarily able students I have encountered were transfer students. Included in this group of extraordinarily able students are those who are new to this country or who came from extreme economic need. The community college provided a bridge for them to the four-year college. We should be on the lookout for such students. For most other students, we need to provide a rigorous orientation program that emphasizes the nature of the independent learning expected in a bachelor's program.

SPEAKER_29:

So we have many faculty with negative opinions related to transfer, and also many faculty who have positive opinions. We need faculty from different institutions to work together on transfer. And students perform better when their instructors view them positively. What can we do to increase the percentage of faculty with positive views about transfer?

SPEAKER_25:

Absolutely. And that is the key question, right? I mean, at Transformation, we believe that faculty are mission critical partners in the transfer student success process. But like all of us, they need an awareness and a deep understanding of the learner experience to do right by students.

SPEAKER_24:

Absolutely. And that's exactly what we started to see in the responses too. Across both sectors and roles, faculty repeated a theme. And it was very clear.

SPEAKER_29:

And a tenured community college faculty member wrote, the data on CUNY transfer should be available information and easy for faculty to access.

SPEAKER_24:

A part-time bachelor's college faculty member wrote, I have absolutely no good information on which to base an informed opinion. I'm just an adjunct. My opinion doesn't matter, and my students never mention this stuff to me.

SPEAKER_29:

Another part-time bachelor's college faculty member wrote, I am an adjunct at a certain bachelor's college. In the seven semesters I've spent there, no one ever talked to me about this. I completed the survey to the best of my knowledge, but I'm worried that this is far more important than what I understand and made me realize the extent of disinformation we faculty have.

SPEAKER_24:

And a part-time community college faculty member wrote, as an adjunct professor at a community college, I am told nothing about transfers, about what challenges my students might face along these lines, or anything else. I do not even know which students might want to transfer to a four-year college until some of them approach me about recommendation letters, which I always provide.

SPEAKER_29:

You know, it's not a surprise that faculty don't have much information about transfer. The typical responsibilities of a faculty member involve teaching their courses well, producing scholarship or creative works, and serving on committees. Ordinarily, faculty know little about, nor are they expected to know anything about, any course their students have already taken, how their students have been treated in the registration process, the challenges their students are facing at home, or even how their students are doing in their other courses. This means that faculty have little actual information about what may be responsible for their students' performance in the faculty members' classroom. And faculty may misinterpret the information that they think they do have. Listen to what this full-time tenured faculty member at a bachelor's college said in the survey. About half of this faculty member's college's bachelor's graduates are transfer students. And as mentioned before, 40% of vertical transfer students' GPAs go up at CUNY after transfer. So there's a very good chance that had this faculty member looked into the background of the students performing well in their class, the faculty member would have found that some of these high-performing students were also transfers. But in this faculty member's mind, transfer students often perform poorly.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_25:

A classic example of seeing what they want to see in that quote. And before that, numerous faculty pointing out that they're doing the best that they can with the very little information that they have. So clearly not enough education and awareness and understanding is being shared with faculty. So, did anyone in the survey suggest what information would be helpful?

SPEAKER_24:

Yes. Thankfully, they definitely did, had lots of ideas to share. So we're going to listen to some more quotes about that information. Let's start with the full-time tenured community college faculty.

SPEAKER_35:

There is a real dearth of transfer data between campuses. Community colleges have no way to track our students' experiences during and after transfer. We need a centralized database that has qualitative and quantitative information that is collected from all constituencies, students, advisors, faculty.

SPEAKER_49:

Provide students and faculty with more information about which courses and how many credits transfer.

SPEAKER_47:

I have very little information about how my students are doing after transfer. I would love to know more about what I can do to prepare my students for success in their bachelor's institutions.

SPEAKER_43:

I am very ignorant about transfer. I am not even sure, for example, when reading statistics about graduation rates, if those figures include transfer students. Since there is an office of transfer in my college, I feel it is mostly their responsibility to give accurate information.

SPEAKER_29:

It would be great to have information about where students go after the associates program. And here is a full-time, not yet tenured, community college faculty member.

SPEAKER_02:

Give associates degree granting colleges digestible information on what matters and why. We're way too busy to think regularly about these big picture matters.

SPEAKER_24:

And also the part-time or adjunct community college faculty.

SPEAKER_33:

I agreed we associate degree faculty need more feedback on how well our students do in four-year programs. I have several former students who tell me they're doing very well in their bachelor's degree programs, but this is really the only information I have. Some actual statistics would be welcome. It's difficult to know if we're doing a good job of preparing our students or not without some actual data and feedback.

SPEAKER_35:

Professors need more information about the process to transfer and how to help their students.

SPEAKER_41:

More information for students and professors about how each course satisfies requirements in a four-year degree program.

SPEAKER_29:

Bachelor's College faculty also made statements on the survey regarding specific information they wanted about transfer.

SPEAKER_06:

A full-time, not yet tenured faculty member said, I've never received any training or information about transfer outcomes or advising or services available to transfer students that I didn't seek out on my own in response to a student question. In two years of working as a full-time employee at my college, or in seven years of being a graduate student employee at CUNY, I do think that intensive continual training for new graduate students, adjuncts, and anyone else employed in first-year writing programs could make a big difference because we inevitably work with so many transfer students at the beginning of their time in a bachelor's degree program. I don't want this to become yet another uncompensated job that adjuncts are forced to take on as part of what they do. But I do think that understanding the labor piece of this equation is critical. As someone who will one day lead the first year practicum, I would also love to have a lot more information than I do to pass along to first-time, first-year composition instructors or other people who have taught first-year composition before they have to take practicum.

SPEAKER_24:

And finally, here are some statements from two part-time adjunct bachelor's college faculty.

SPEAKER_03:

Many faculty members would like to do more to support vertical transfer students, but some faculty don't know where to start due to lack of information about what these students need.

SPEAKER_19:

Instructors should have information about the specific needs of transfer students and clear information about resources that can help them.

SPEAKER_25:

A few things really stuck out to me and what the faculty are asking for. They want digestible information. They want qualitative and quantitative data and training. They want to be able to track students during and after transfer. And they want clear information about resources and how courses actually transfer. I mean, that all sounds pretty reasonable to me and pretty maybe easy to get or at least share with faculty.

SPEAKER_29:

What do you think, Lexa? I completely agree, Heather. And I'm happy to report that since this survey was conducted in 2021, CUNY has instituted a website called Transfer Explorer, which is also known as T-Rex, which provides some of this information. T-Rex easily shows everyone with no login how all CUNY courses transfer to all CUNY colleges, including what program requirements the transferred credits will satisfy at the new college. A national version of Transfer Explorer has recently been released by Ithaca. So at least some of the information that the CUNY faculty said they wanted, they are now indeed getting.

SPEAKER_25:

Ooh, I love that. Wow. I know you and the team behind the T-Rex system have put in a massive amount of work over the past few years to ensure that it's really robust and transparent. And you're setting the bar for sure on what an open and accessible system should look like. So thank you for that. In fact, I think we could do an entire episode on that project. So if you're interested, hint hint. I am, I am. Oh, yay! So for now, we'll link to a few T-Rex resources so folks who are listening can get a little more information and we'll put those in the show notes. Emily, what are you thinking?

SPEAKER_24:

Yeah, so lots of things, probably like a lot of our listeners, but mostly that faculty aren't asking for anything crazy. And what's really striking to me is that the information they want probably exists somewhere in the system. They just don't have easy access to it. I can't help but think about Julie Wong's book on my own. I know a lot of our listeners have read that and are also fans of that wonderful work. But in that, she of course shows that transfer students are highly motivated, but navigating without adequate institutional support. I think we're seeing the same thing with faculty here. They want to help their students, but they're kind of on their own, piecing together information wherever they can find it, or like we heard earlier, relying on assumptions to fill the gap.

SPEAKER_25:

That parallel really resonates. I like that. If students need institutional support to navigate transfer successfully, faculty do too. I think that seems like a no-brainer. So let's talk solutions. But not today. Today we are out of time. I'd love to continue this conversation in another episode where we can really delve into how institutions can actually close that information gap and better equip faculty with what they need.

SPEAKER_24:

Yeah, I think that would be great because obviously all of us are sitting here like with so many thoughts. We want to chime in. And it's important to hear those voices directly. So I'm game.

SPEAKER_25:

Yay! Awesome. Okay, I'm excited to brainstorm. Uh Lexa and Emily, thank you for being here and for sharing this research with us today. We've heard so much in this episode. Faculty perspective on what's working, what's not working, tensions between community colleges and bachelor's institutions, and real gaps in the information faculty say they need. Is there anything else before we wrap up that you want listeners to know?

SPEAKER_29:

Well, first of all, thanks so much for having us do this, Heather. This has been great and Emily. I hope that hearing the quotes has been interesting and helpful. And for listeners who want to dig deeper into what faculty are saying, we encourage you to check out our new publication on the results of the faculty survey in the Journal of Post-Secondary Student Success. Also, our data set with over 4,000 faculty responses to the open-ended questions is also freely available in CUNY's Academic Works repository. So please explore it and use it for your own research questions.

SPEAKER_25:

Excellent. I love that. We'll make sure to link to both of those in the show notes.

SPEAKER_24:

Yeah, and I just also add obviously a huge thank you to Lexa for leading this work and for inviting me into this conversation and sharing all these quotes. But I think mostly what I want to leave with is as I said before, I hear about negative attitudes and collaboration challenges anecdotally all the time. But seeing them documented in such really strong language is such a powerful reminder to me and hopefully to everybody else of how important it is to actually ask faculty for input and give them space to be candid. You know, talk to your students is one of the top pieces of advice that we give, but we need to make time to hear from faculty too, even when it's uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_29:

And I'd be remiss if I didn't add that we are really grateful for the support of this research by the Ascendium, ECMC, Gates, Heckscher, Ichigo, Mellon, and Petrie Foundations, and also by the Institute of Education Sciences. We're also grateful to CUNY's Office of Applied Research, Evaluation and Data Analytics, CCRC, Ithaca SNR, MDRC, NISTS, and TransferNation, all of those for their collaboration in our transfer work, and especially, of course, to NISTS and TransferNation and all our volunteer quote readers, who are amazing, for everything they did, all of them, to make this podcast a reality.

SPEAKER_24:

Yeah, they did a totally awesome job. That was so fun.

SPEAKER_25:

Truly such a creative episode. I'm so grateful. All right, listeners, we want to hear from you. First, were you surprised by what you heard from faculty today? Have you heard similar sentiments in your own campuses? Uh, we just want to know, alternatively, what's one thing that your campus has done to get timely, accurate transfer info to faculty? Or maybe there's a roadblock that you're hitting. We want to know, we want to know it all. So send a voice memo or a DM to Transformation. And thank you so much for listening. You are listening to Transfer Nation Talks. TransferNation is a community of educators and advocates working to improve the transfer and post-traditional student experience and celebrate transfer and community college as the pathway of success that it is. You can join us here every week or so for conversations on, well, everything transfer. From advocate conversations focused on grappling with today's most important transfer-centric topics to the nuts and bolts on transfer programming services and building more inclusion for transfers on our campuses. To transfer stories and the inside scoop from transfers and transfer alum. You can continue the conversation with the community anytime on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, and in person at the many events and transfer think tanks hosted by the TransferNation community. So be sure to join us on your favorite platform as we learn from and with one another how to bust out of the status quo, disrupt systemic inequities, and reimagine, reform, renew, and regenerate educational opportunities that work for students, that center the student experience of today, rather than what works best for outdated and ineffective processes and procedure. Until our next conversation from the whole Transformation team in Transfer Community and Transfer Pride. See you next time!

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Dr. Heather Adams

Host