Transferring from a community college to a four-year college or university can be an exciting experience, but for some students, making sure they are following all the necessary steps can feel overwhelming. To take the guesswork out of transferring, the New Jersey Statewide Transfer Initiative (NJ Transfer) was created to be a go-to resource for course equivalencies, recommended coursework, and later, transcript evaluations. “When our web presence was launched in 2001, the site was created to help students, faculty, staff, and parents in the state to explore course equivalencies between community colleges and four-year institutions,” explains Théa Olsen, Executive Director, NJ Transfer. “Over the years, NJ Transfer’s website has become an even greater source of information, including transfer-specific recruitment events, as well as direct links to general information about an institution, links to their application, and transfer-specific points of contact. Students can begin the process at NJ Transfer, rather than having to start at several individual institutions’ websites to find the same information.”
Having that point of contact and/or knowing the specific department to reach out to allows students to establish their first relationship with the institution and have a support system they can count on throughout their undergraduate years. “NJ Transfer not only offers a database of course equivalencies for the participating four years, but also hosts transfer programs that list out the recommended coursework for the first two years of study for any of their degree programs that accept transfer applicants,” says Olsen. “Students can take advantage of our transcript evaluations which provide a course-by-course evaluation. This tool can apply the results to the Transfer Programs to show the recommended courses that have been completed and how many are left outstanding. By using our website and working with their academic advisor, community college students can confidently register for their upcoming terms and make well-laid plans to achieve their academic goals fulfilling both their current degree requirements and the recommended coursework of the transfer program they hope to apply to.”
Creating a Positive User Experience
To deliver the most up-to-date and accurate information to users, NJ Transfer depends on long-standing data maintenance processes that operate and interact with key points of contact at each of the 43 participating institutions. “Every institution reports on a monthly or annual basis to ensure that all data is reviewed and changes are being reported,” explains Olsen. “When we call it the New Jersey Statewide Transfer Initiative, it truly is that. Keeping our system current and accurate to ensure students are receiving the information that they need is a statewide effort.”
“Specifically, we have the public-facing website, NJtransfer.org, and an admin site we log into to make necessary edits to the web pages, however NJ Transfer also has two more user facing systems,” continues Olsen. “Our WebAdmin system is built to allow the two-year account holders to submit new and revised courses, as well as maintain their syllabi, and conversely, the four-year account holders have access to the newly submitted courses so they can review and award them transfer credit. Once reviewed and approved, the information will be publicly accessible on the NJtransfer.org site. In addition, we manage an Electronic Transcript System where the two-year institutions can send their transcripts via our electronic data interchange (EDI) and the four-year institutions will receive the transcripts with the traditional data points. In addition NJ Transfer’s service provides a document that includes a column containing the course equivalencies based on when the student took the course, the grade they earned, and what our data shows as awarded based on that information.”
In recent months, Olsen says she has made several changes that have greatly improved both their internal workload and the user experience for the staff who engage in the website and handle data maintenance at their institutions. “To help reduce the time between when changes are happening at the campuses and when these revisions are being reported to us, we now manage these processes via a Google Drive per institution; which has significantly cut down on our email volume. This approach provides a history of requests and confirms the changes were made, and also allows for a smoother transition when a staff member may leave and a new hire steps into the role. We have streamlined our procedures so each NJ Transfer team member handles different processes or pieces of the processes to ensure things are completed in a timely manner. This also helps our team of three people to balance our workloads, keep all of the pieces moving in the background, and have the opportunity to participate in any large projects that may come our way.”
NJ Transfer maintains a large database dating back twenty years, and while managing data of that size can prove challenging, Olsen says relationship management is key to turning any challenges into opportunities. “Making sure we have well-developed, consistent channels of communication and relationships with staff members across the 43 institutions is essential. I cannot speak highly enough of the people we partner with at the two- and four-year institutions who work diligently with students every day. Our goal is to make the volume of work they do more manageable and allow them to help students more efficiently. A crucial part of our job is being able to see patterns and identify pitfalls when working on large data sets and evaluating our business practices. Along with our existing annual operations calendar, we’ve needed to build processes around bulk updates and decide how to delegate these updates appropriately across the team to ensure we are delivering a positive customer experience and making the updates in a timely manner.”
Helping Students Make Confident Decisions
Through NJ Transfer’s evolution, new features and tools continue to be added to help users access the information they need to support their path in pursuing their higher education. “Over the years we have added tutorials under our Help drop down menu that give an overview of the website and specific instructions for using the various tools and resources found on NJ Transfer,” says Olsen. “We also added a staff and faculty drop down where those users can easily access the information they need from a single location. In 2022, we implemented additional changes that were geared toward improving the experience and workload of the staff user, to enhance their evaluation turnaround time and ultimately provide students with the information they need more quickly. When we change something or add a new feature, we do it with the student and staff users in mind, to either directly and positively impact the student user or positively impact staff user. This helps them work smarter, not harder, which in turn indirectly, but positively, impacts the students.”
“Making sure we have well-developed, consistent channels of communication and relationships with staff members across the 43 institutions is essential. I cannot speak highly enough of the people we partner with at the two- and four-year institutions who work diligently with students every day. Our goal is to make the volume of work they do more manageable and allow them to help students more efficiently. A crucial part of our job is being able to see patterns and identify pitfalls when working on large data sets and evaluating our business practices. Along with our existing annual operations calendar, we’ve needed to build processes around bulk updates and decide how to delegate these updates appropriately across the team to ensure we are delivering a positive customer experience and making the updates in a timely manner.”
– Thea Olsen
Executive Director
NJ Transfer
Over the last two years, Olsen has provided workshops that train staff on the site and help ensure they feel confident about how to use all the tools and resources. “Going forward, I would like to expand the audience of these workshops to include guidance counselors who work directly with high school juniors and seniors, and their parents. They are all involved in the decision-making process and helping students understand how to use NJ Transfer’s academic planning tools. Using these tools as early as possible will help students use the website more effectively, work with their advisor, and feel confident in their registration decisions. We want all students to feel empowered in their transfer experience.”
In looking ahead, Olsen says they will continue to enhance the tools and resources available through NJ Transfer to help more students on their academic journey. “In recent years, college enrollment has been impacted, not only in New Jersey, but across the country. There is definitely a spotlight on transfer students, including traditional populations, but also adult learners. My goal is to help every partner at each participating institution and as many staff as possible in the K-12 secondary education institutions understand the value of NJ Transfer and how to use this resource to help students make informed decisions. We want more students and parents to see community college as a realistic path to expand their horizons and earn their associate’s and bachelor’s degrees. NJ Transfer is not just a place to find course equivalencies, but is truly an academic planning tool that allows students to maximize their transfer credits, keep them on track to achieve their dreams, and make the most of their higher education experience.”
To learn more about NJ Transfer and how its resources are helping improve the transfer student experience throughout New Jersey, visit www.njtransfer.org.
