March 14, 2005
TO: Department Chairs
FROM: Peter D. Spear, Provost
RE: Course Access for Incoming Transfer Students
Each fall over 1,500 new students transfer to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to pursue an undergraduate degree. In fact, about 20% of our graduates entered UW-Madison as transfer students. Many of these students face a major roadblock in their ability to pursue their academic careers here successfully: a lack of access to courses they need to pursue their major. I am writing to ask you to work with your colleagues to find ways to assist our transfer students with gaining access to the courses they need to get a firm footing in their majors.
A recent study of new transfer students shows that 51% of them entered with sophomore standing, 38% with junior standing, and 7% with senior standing. Sophomores should be able to establish the records that will allow them to declare a major within a year, and juniors must be in a position to make progress in their major. Due to the nature of the transfer process - especially the timing of their admission and arrival on campus and issues arising from completing transfer credit processes involving multiple institutions -- the vast majority of new transfer students do not become eligible to register until after freshmen begin registering. This means that many sophomores, juniors and seniors are closed out of courses they need to declare a major in the first place or to proceed successfully through their major - courses to which they would have had access had they been able to register according to their class standing.
Many of our new students face a disappointing and frustrating "welcome" to campus, and many advisors report spending hours pursuing ad hoc arrangements to help these students. In most cases, the students had no opportunity to take these courses earlier because the courses were not available at their previous campus.
We are working to find ways to expedite the transfer process, but it is unlikely that most transfer students will be in a position to register with other members of their class even with improvements in the system. I urge you find ways to give consideration to the special difficulties faced by these students. Some departments, for example, have identified courses in their departments that are especially likely to be needed by new transfer students to enter their degree program or begin making progress in it, and they reserve some spaces for them. Your advisors are likely to be familiar with the trouble spots; the problems are, for the most part, predictable. With the cooperation of the faculty who teach those courses, your advisors may be well-positioned to help you develop a system that will help alleviate the disadvantages transfer students face as well as limit the need for repeated searches for ad hoc solutions.
If you would like more information on these and related transfer student issues, consult with the final report of the Committee on the Transfer Student Experience http://wiscinfo.doit.wisc.edu/obpa/CTSE/. The appendices include a report that might be especially useful to you, "Transfer and Traditional Students: Patterns of Course-taking and Participation in Academic Programs."
Thank you for your consideration. If you have questions, please feel free to consult me or Virginia Sapiro, Associate Vice Chancellor for Teaching and Learning (vsapiro@wisc.edu).
cc: Deans
Undergraduate Advisors