Tackling Transfer Funding Recipients Announced

Tackling Transfer Pilot Project

Regional Funding Award ($250,000)
Lead institution: Metro State University
Collaborating institutions: Saint Paul College and Minneapolis College
Contact: Carrie Carroll

Tackling Transfer Pilot Project is a collaborative effort designed to increase enrollment, retention, and graduation rates across all three schools and supports overall regional economic growth and community success. This project seeks to remove existing barriers and challenges for transfer students such as confusing communication, complicated forms, excessive steps, unclear policies, deficit-based approaches, and lack of staff training. Our shared commitment to anti-racism in our policies and practices drives our work. Promoting top social mobility for our students accelerates the economic and social inclusion for graduates of our institutions and provides the Twin Cities with diverse, well-educated business, civic, and community leaders.

Empowering Students: Validating their CPL as Transfer

Campus Collaborative Funding Award ($150,000)
Lead institution: Minnesota State Community and Technical College
Collaborating institutions: Minnesota State University Moorhead, Northland Community and Technical College, Northwest Technical College, Credit for Prior Learning Assessment Network, and Bemidji State University
Contact: Christopher Johnson

Empowering Students will engage campus and community stakeholders in creating credit for prior learning (CPL) pathways that validate the skills and knowledge of underserved learners. It aims to converge at three levels:

1. Institutional – Streamline CPL workflows; expand campus expertise through professional development framework; and apply data to improve policies and practices.
2. Student – Offer transfer pathways that integrate CPL consistently, and that students can easily navigate.
3. Industry – Collaborate with employers and community-based organizations to align skills and competencies of industry-based certifications with current college curricula.

Trans4Success: Expanding Proven Practice to Close Equity Gaps in Educational Attainment for BIPOC, First Generation, and Pell Eligible Transfer Students

Campus Collaborative Funding Award ($150,000)
Lead institution: Minnesota State University Moorhead
Collaborating institutions: Minnesota State Community and Technical College, White Earth Tribal and Community College
Contact: Ok-Hee Lee

Trans4Success intends to tackle three equity gaps to transfer experience – the fear of the unknown, wait time associated with preliminary credit evaluations, and the lack of first year experiences (FYE) and onboarding experiences specifically designed for transfer students. Our strategies to tackle the gaps include:

1. offering transcript evaluations for credit prior to students’ inquiry
2. offering FYE-like courses to improve transition to Minnesota State University Moorhead
3. creating onboarding experiences within our academic programs specifically designed for transfers.

These evidence-based, equity minded, and innovative strategies will enhance transfer experiences in its entirety and improve transfer students’ persistence, retention, and completion while advancing Equity 2030.

Unrestricted Movement: Tackling Transfer for Incarcerated and Justice-Impacted Students

Campus Collaborative Funding Award ($150,000)
Lead institutions: Metro State University and Minneapolis College
Collaborating institutions: Transformation and Re-entry through Education and Community (TREC) Program and the Minnesota Department of Corrections
Contacts: Travis Sands and Mike Valesano

Unrestricted Movement is designed to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our justice-impacted student transfer experience between Minneapolis College and Metro State University. It will facilitate the ease of access across our two institutions for timely degree completion for currently incarcerated students, recently released students, and justice-impacted people looking to return to higher education. With this grant, we will create a Minneapolis College-Metro State University co-enrollment process for currently incarcerated TREC students, design and build a more sustainable process to share financial aid and academic records between Minneapolis College and Metro State University, and conduct a mixed methods study to identify and understand what makes a successful student transfer experience for justice-involved students on both our prison campuses and main campuses.

Collaborating for Transfer Student Success

Campus Collaborative Funding Award ($150,000)
Lead institutions: Minnesota State University, Mankato
Collaborating institutions: South Central College and Riverland Community College
Contacts: Teri Wallace

Collaborating for Student Success will strengthen capacity among our institutions to meet our individual and collective goals towards tackling transfer. We plan to enhance our own professional development, expand equivalencies, create a transfer site with self-service resources, and promote practices and policies that align with Equity 2030 aiming to eliminate disparities and success gaps. Our goal is to increase the rate of completion, reduce time to graduation, increase number of transfer credits that count for programs, and more. We will engage in research at our campuses to improve support for our transfer students while engaging diverse students and stakeholders.

Avenues of Opportunity: Building Bridges for Underrepresented Students in College Transfers

Campus Collaborative Funding Award ($150,000)
Lead institutions: Minnesota State College Southeast
Collaborating institutions: Winona State University
Contacts: Mark Johnson

Avenues of Opportunity expands transfer opportunities for students by establishing a new collaboration between Minnesota State College Southeast and Winona State University. Core elements of the proposal are drawn from best practices for increasing transfer to degree attainment as documented by the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program and the Community College Research Center at Columbia University. We focus on enhancing the use of data and metrics, streamlining advising systems and processes, and increasing early ‘bridge’ connections for transfer students. In alignment with Equity 2030, our work will be focused on decreasing equity gaps for Pell-eligible, first-generation, and BIPOC students.

Creation of TYEX Classes to Help CSET Transfer Students Achieve Academic Success

Campus Collaborative Across Institutional Departments Funding Award ($50,000)
Lead institutions: Minnesota State University, Mankato
Contacts: Allison Land

Creation of TYEX seeks to tackle transfer by creating “TYEX” (transfer year experience) courses for incoming College of Science, Engineering and Technology (CSET) transfer students. These courses will be modeled on Minnesota State University, Mankato’s well-established, effective first year experience course, but focus on the unique needs of transfer students. Each class will be composed of a discipline-specific and culturally-centered cohort, and enhanced by a well-trained peer mentor who is an experienced transfer student, from the same discipline and cultural emphasis. By creating supportive cohorts of students who share skills and strategies, we aim to improve academic success and eliminate inequity gaps.