Beyond Transfer
Long before we became transfer professionals, we were transfer students trying to understand systems that were not always designed to make our next steps clear—or to make us feel that we belonged once we arrived.
Our journeys were different. Alexis spent hours piecing together requirements, checking whether courses would transfer and relying on faculty and staff members who helped her navigate a process that too often felt dependent on luck. Vivian reached her new institutions only to find that transferring successfully did not automatically mean feeling welcomed, recognized or connected.
Those experiences continue to shape how we support students today. They remind us that transfer success is not only about gaining admission or moving credits. It is also about having clear information, trusted relationships, recognition of what students already bring and an intentional sense of belonging throughout the journey.
July was Transfer Professionals Month, a time to recognize the faculty, counselors, advisers, administrators and campus leaders who help students navigate the transfer process and achieve their educational and professional goals. The month provided a great time for us to reflect on what our experiences taught us—and what all of us who work with transfer students can do to make the journey better. A strong transfer ecosystem—programs, services and formal or informal partnerships that support students on their transfer journey—ensures students have access to the comprehensive, holistic and student-centered support needed to persist and successfully transition to a new learning environment.
Vivian’s Story: Belonging Does Not Happen Automatically
My transfer experience was profoundly disorienting. It was marked by institutional friction, social isolation and an erosion of self-worth that ultimately reshaped how I approach supporting college students.
I arrived as a junior at a small liberal arts college after graduating from community college. I quickly found myself caught between two worlds. I was too advanced for many of the activities designed for first-year, first-time-in-college students, yet clubs and organizations often treated me as a novice. My previous leadership experience was dismissed, and established social circles were difficult to enter because I was a transfer student and hadn’t had the time to develop those connections yet.
The isolation deepened into clinical depression. Each day—and eventually each class—felt insurmountable. Within weeks, a tearful phone call home prompted my parents to pick me up from campus. The shame I felt about withdrawing stayed with me long after I left.
That experience became the foundation of my career. I understand from lived experience how transfer students can be marginalized within institutions and how a lack of belonging can affect a student’s mental health, confidence and ability to persist. It also taught me that effective transfer student support requires more than an orientation session or an invitation to a club fair. It requires proactive outreach, recognition of students’ prior accomplishments and intentional structures that integrate transfer students into the institution rather than leaving them in a perpetual outsider status.
Today, I try to provide the kind of recognition and proactive support I needed. That means shifting from mere task completion to the fundamental questions of whether students feel known, valued and connected to their new institution.
Alexis’s Story: Transfer Should Not Depend on Luck
During my journey through the community college system, I witnessed both how transformative higher education can be and how the inequities within the system can limit students’ opportunities.
In my first term, I quickly learned that the traditional 2+2 transfer model was far from guaranteed. I saw peers building three-, four- and five-year plans to transfer, with their progress often depending on whether they happened to find a mentor willing to guide them through a convoluted system.
As a first-generation student, I often felt like I was googling my way through higher education. I searched for information about the FAFSA, repeatedly checked whether my credits would transfer and tried to make sense of university-specific requirements. I relied on multiple staff and faculty members to help me piece the information together.
I spent hours deciphering general education requirements, comparing prerequisites and trying to determine whether the courses I was taking would actually count toward my future degree. Every advising appointment seemed to generate new questions. I constantly worried that one wrong course or missed requirement could delay my transfer. As a low-income, first-generation student, a delayed transfer was not only a matter of taking an extra quarter—it carried real financial consequences for me and my family. Additional time enrolled meant added financial strain, more time balancing college and work, and a delayed pathway toward achieving my educational and career goals.
Looking back, I feel incredibly fortunate that I was able to transfer in a timely way. I can’t help but recognize that my success was made possible, in large part, by the luck of finding people who became personally invested in my journey.
Students should not have to rely on luck to receive clear information, thoughtful guidance or encouragement. They should not need to become experts in institutional policy to understand which courses to take and whether those courses will move them closer to their goals. My experience now shapes how I think about transfer professionally. Providing students with information is important, but information alone is not enough. Students need people who help them interpret it, understand how it applies to their individual goals and anticipate questions they may not yet know to ask.
What Our Experiences Taught Us
Our experiences occurred at different points in the transfer journey, but they taught us many of the same lessons.
Students need more than access to an institution. They need systems and people that recognize what they already bring, anticipate where confusion or disconnection may occur, and take shared responsibility for helping them move forward.
For transfer professionals—and for everyone whose work affects transfer students—that can mean:
- Making guidance proactive. Transfer students often navigate complex processes with little room for error, where a missed requirement, unclear policy or delayed support can quickly add extra time onto their educational journey. Institutions should anticipate barriers, communicate early and often, and share resources that help students efficiently navigate the institution so they can access support and successfully transition into their new learning environment. This requires moving beyond passive information-sharing by embedding transfer-specific resources throughout the learning environment, offering accessible office hours in both in-person and virtual modalities, and consistently sharing information across classrooms, advising and additional campus touch points, reducing the burden on transfer students to continually seek out critical information on their own.
- Designing belonging for transfer students. Belonging does not happen by chance. It requires intentional opportunities for transfer students to build community, connect with peers and engage with campus in ways that reflect the realities of today’s transfer population. Many transfers commute, work while attending school, care for family members and/or are student parents, making it challenging to participate in campus activities. Transfer students arrive with valuable knowledge and lived experiences. Cultivating a sense of belonging means reimagining engagement through flexible programming and inclusive spaces that accommodate the diverse responsibilities and lived experiences transfer students bring to our campuses.
- Coordinating support across roles and institutions. Transferring institutions is a shared responsibility. Strong partnerships among community colleges, four-year institutions, faculty, advisers and student support professionals create a more seamless experience. This also means prioritizing credit mobility by ensuring students can transfer with the credits they have earned and minimizing unnecessary credit loss and keeping students on track to degree completion.
- Listening before designing solutions. Transfer students are transfer professionals. They are experts in their lived experiences and provide invaluable insight into what is working, where barriers remain and how institutions can better support future students. Creating opportunities to partner with students in the design and implementation of initiatives, while investing in student-centered research, ensures that support and resources reflect students’ lived experiences.
The Work Ahead Is Shared
Transfer students often become highly skilled navigators of higher education because the system requires them to be. They learn to research, compare, question, double-check and advocate for themselves. Those are valuable strengths—but students should not have to carry the transfer process alone.
Our responsibility as transfer professionals is not simply to help students become better at navigating complexity. It is also to reduce unnecessary complexity, build belonging into the transfer journey and create systems in which progress no longer depends on luck or on finding one extraordinary person willing to help.
During Transfer Professionals Month—and throughout the year—we invite everyone who supports transfer students, directly or indirectly, to recognize their role in this interconnected ecosystem and the collective responsibility we share in advancing transfer success.
