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Article Type

Professional Proficiency

Article Abstract

Related Issue:

Four-year institutions, as the recipients of community college transfers seeking their baccalaureate degrees, must become more proactive participants in the transfer process and conversation. Currently, enrollment management models and data reporting requirements allow four-year institutions to take a passive approach to the issue of transfer. As an issue that affects nearly half of the nation’s undergraduates, to the detriment of the vast majority of them, and the effects of which are visited disproportionally both on underrepresented minority and on low-income students, this passivity is increasingly problematic on a national level. A recent study shows that where a specific and intentional program of community college outreach, scholarship support, and advisement are applied at a highly-selective four-year institution, there are sharp and significant effects on the enrollment and demographic numbers of transfer students, while maintaining high levels of student success and institutional standards.

Author(s)

Bart Grachan, Ed.D., is the director of Admissions at St. Thomas Aquinas College in Sparkill, NY, overseeing undergraduate and graduate admissions to the 3000 student campus. Previously, he was the director of the Community College Transfer Opportunity Program (CCTOP) at the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, where he was able to conduct research on intentional transfer though his position, as part of his doctoral studies. He has worked with transfer students for more than a decade, and has been actively involved in the New York State Transfer and Articulation Association (NYSTAA) and in AACRAO on issues of transfer and social justice, presenting a number of times at conferences, including at the most recent AACRAO Transfer Conference and an AACRAO webinar. Dr. Grachan holds a B.A. from Fordham University (’93), an M.S.T. and an M.A. from Iona College (’98 and ’01) and his Ed.D. from NYU (’13).

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