Committee Members From This Past Year

• Michelle Johnson (Chair)
• Erika Bailey (Member)
• Emily Davis (Member)
• Marianne Fischer (Member)
• Shawn Jenkins (Member)
• Mackenzie Prins (Member)

Vacancies for F21/W22

None

As the inaugural committee, what things did you learn as a group?

1. Each member presented their transfer center's TSAR Process
          A. The GVSU TSAR experience is individualized for each center
          B. Identified common practices and documents
          C. Acknowledged that centers may need to incorporate some specialized advising
                    i. Secondary admits, LEADS, direct admits, graduate programs, etc.
          D. Acknowledged transfer students have many things in common no matter their major
          E. Working towards common TSAR experience for all GVSU transfer students

2. The GVSU Admissions transfer pages are confusing from an advisor perspective
          A. Information on those pages is decentralized with confusing links making it hard to follow
          B. We need a common hub to share and receive information relevant to transfer students.

3. GVSU does not offer a consistent Transfer Student on-boarding event to acclimate transfer students.

4. We need to have a TSAR marketing strategy

5. We should consider making videos to reach our students

6. We need to integrate admissions (Bonnie) into our discussions in order to streamline the process from start to finish
          A. Bonnie Ulmer joined our meeting on 4/26/21 and we plan to continue our conversations in the future

7. Not to rush our work

What accomplishments did your committee achieve during this past academic year? Projects and initiatives worked on?

1. We met as a committee 10 times between 12/1/20 and 4/30/21

2. Identifying our goals
          A. Marketing/Advertising/Videos
          B. Admissions website collaboration
          C. Advising center common process/documents
          D. Fall/Winter transfer student on-boarding event (transitions)

3. Created draft TSAR webpages:
          A. TSAR homepage
          B. TSAR prep
          C. TSAR session
          D. TSAR next steps

What work will you carry over that was unfinished to the next academic year?

Our committee has agreed to work over the summer to keep the momentum moving forward. Although we started working from the 2018 Transfer Committee Executive Summary it was outdated so we pulled the framework and started from there. We will continue to work on building our specific goals for next year over the summer and will have a better idea of how those will look in early September.

How did COVID-19 impact your committee work this year?

1. The ability to meet virtually gave us much more flexibility in our meeting times which allowed us to meet bi-weekly most of the time. This was a positive outcome.
2. Our advising schedules are busy and not as predictable (due to Covid) as in the past so it has been harder to find a standing meeting day/time.