SUNY Hosts Town Hall for Transfer Task Force

The SUNY administration held the “SUNY Transfer Town Hall” on March 5 to highlight the findings from the SUNY Transfer Task Force and how the nation’s largest system of public higher education will move forward in its efforts to accommodate students transferring into SUNY schools.

The town hall, which was held via Zoom, saw over 800 faculty, staff members and students listen to senior SUNY administration members speak about the task force, its findings and how it will act to promote transfer student success.

“A bachelor’s degree can be an important milestone in that [the higher education] journey, but for too long, too many students who begin at a community college and aspire to earn a bachelor’s degree at SUNY and across the country encounter many more roadblocks,” said SUNY Chancellor John B. King in a pre-recorded video played at the start of the town hall.

“That’s why we created the Transfer Task Force. [For] just one year, this group of more than 100 stakeholders from across the SUNY system came together to explore all aspects of transferring, identify barriers and needs including maximizing credit, acceptance, the clarity and consistency and transfer policies and practices and identifying the system of resources and tools for students, faculty and staff.”

Following Chancellor King’s video, Senior Vice Chancellor for Student Success Donna Linderman described how the administration will implement the task force’s set of recommendations.

“We are launching a multi-year initiative that will require active participation and collaboration from all SUNY stakeholders, including faculty, staff and students at the campus and system level to strategically revise our policies, streamline procedures and reimagine transfer business processes,” Linderman said. 

She explained that the task force identified 32 recommendations that each fall into one of four categories: ensuring transfer students receive maximum possible credit for their previous coursework, making transfer processes more consistent and transparent, providing additional resources and building stronger partnerships between SUNY campuses.

She also announced the creation of a student advisory committee “which will consist of student leaders and transfer students who can provide all of our advisory groups with periodic feedback, recommendation and guidance from the student perspective.”

Linderman then introduced Assistant Vice Chancellor for Transfer and Articulation Thom Hanford, who will be leading a freshly-created office that, for the first time in the SUNY system administration, is focused exclusively on issues associated with transferring.

“Our first goal is to double our overall six-year graduation rate,” Hanford said. The rate is currently 21% for first-year SUNY transfer students.

“We aim to reduce the number of transfer credits that are not being accepted … currently, the national average is over 40% of credits lost, on average, per student when they transfer from a two-year community college to a four-year program. Again, SUNY does better [than the national average], but system wide, on average, we want to do even better than what we’re doing currently. We want to be at no more than 20% loss as a baseline.”

The full report from the SUNY Transfer Task Force can be found at https://transfer.suny.edu/task-force/