Tackling Transfer Initiative Brief: Engaging Faculty Values

The Aspen Institute College Excellence Program, HCM Strategists, and Sova are leading the national Tackling Transfer partnership, supporting transfer policy, practice, research, and strategic communications in three states--Minnesota, Texas, and Virginia--and across the country. Tackling Transfer has packaged its learnings from this project into a series of publications that discuss how to build awareness around transfer issues, set statewide goals, develop and implement new policies, strengthen pathways and advising, and more. 

A recent publication, Engaging Faculty Values to Develop Supportive Transfer Cultures: A Toolkit for Transfer Champions, authored by Dr. Shanna S. Jaggars and Dr. Marcos D. Rivera from the OSAS Student Success Research Lab, outlines strategies institutions can use to engage their own faculty in an expanded or strengthened transfer mission.

The brief describes three values that are commonly held by academic faculty, connects them with potential underlying assumptions about transfer students, and suggests artifacts that can help overturn false assumptions and clarify the alignment between faculty's pre-existing values and the transfer student mission.