Aligning Transfer Sense of Belonging with Transfer Student Experiences

Students who begin their higher education trajectories at community college (or TYC) have complex and unique pathways (Dachille & Quan, 2024). Researchers in higher education often use sense of belonging as a metric for understanding the success of students on their journeys (Goplan & Brady, 2020). In this presentation, I will discuss the need to move to a construct that invites transfer students to be part of changing the culture of higher education to be welcoming of transfer students. To this end, I introduce the construct of Transfer Sense of Belonging (TSB), which empowers transfer students to meaningfully engage with change processes while putting the responsibility on the broader system to change to meet the needs of transfer students. I am studying TSB in the context of the newly formed Transfer Experience Mentoring Program (TEMPO). TEMPO is designed to provide opportunities for transfer students to develop TSB. I will be using a series of case studies with TEMPO mentors, explored with a transfer grid, to align the construct of TSB with the experiences of these TEMPO mentors.

This work was also generously supported by the IMPACT STEM Transfer Network and Michigan State University.