Tuesday, March 31, 2009

I was nostalgic for the good ol' j1 reporting days so here's my 'Big Story' on transfer students at USF

Inside the Mind of a Transfer Student

Jared Frazer recalls his freshman year at San Francisco State. He did not get along with his roommate, he was in overcrowded classes, and he was forced to take elective classes that he didn’t want because all the classes he wanted were already full. Since then he has bounced around to three other colleges, including The New York Film Academy and Santa Monica Community College. Now, six years later, Frazier, a 24-year-old media studies major, says he has finally found a home at USF. As opposed to his other schools, Frazer says he loves the quiet community, the small college and the intimate classroom setting.

Every year, students transfer to USF. They might have finished their general education at a community college and are ready to make the transition into a four-year university, or they may be switching colleges because it wasn’t quite the right fit for them. 

Out of the six transfer students interviewed, USF’s location and small class sizes were among the most common reasons transfer students chose to come to USF.

Melissa Baron, a transfer student from Northeastern University in Boston says, “I knew I wanted a school in the city. More importantly, I knew I wanted a small school in a big city.” She says she liked the fact that USF had all the advantages of the small school setting, but was in the big city, where everything was at her fingertips. She was very excited about the fact that she could “explore things outside of USF.”

However, even though the campus is in the heart of San Francisco and the college is relatively small, “transfer students feel left out,” says Alexandra Platt, ASUSF Senate President.

“Although we do a special transfer orientation, it’s not at the same scale with the Freshman Orientation” says Platt, “starting out as a Freshman, you come into the college experience with 1000 other people in the same place; all learning the same things about the school and getting into the groove at the same time. For transfer students, they don’t get a chance to go through that learning curve with their class.”

Terry Leigh, a transfer student from Marymount College, feels that USF didn’t make a great effort to make new transfer students feel welcomed. Leigh, 20, says, “The community wasn’t that welcoming. It [was] rough coming in as a transfer student, especially [living] off-campus.”

Christina Hammill, a transfer student from De Anza College, agrees. Hammill, 21, lives in the Pedro Arupe resident halls off-campus and says “Pedro Arupe is not very transfer friendly. The people are all nice but it’s very cliquey and not like the freshman dorms where everyone wants to make new friends.” However, Hammill admits that there is really nothing USF can do to fix this problem. “Pedro Arupe did offer one dinner specifically for transfer students, but I was in class.”

Jared Frazer also lives off-campus but feels differently. “The transfer orientation was very helpful in helping me get a feel for the school.” He said he liked the fact “the it [made] [him] feel comfortable in the presence of USF… it was nice to feel included in activities that were apart of USF.” When told how his opinions greatly differed from his fellow transfer students, he had no sympathy; he said that first and foremost, “college is about doing things for yourself.”

As part of the ASUSF Senate, Jo Wieneck, a transfer student from community college in Santa Cruz, wants the school to take more initiative welcoming transfer students. Wieneck, a 20-year-old business major, is trying to add a new position to the Senate, where someone would be named the “Transfer Representative” for the school.

She also has plans in the works for a mentor program specifically for transfer students, where they would be able to talk to a fellow student if they had any questions about the school.  

Aside from the problems transfer students had integrating into the USF community, another problem has lingered for transfers and non-transfers alike. Many students on campus feel there is a severe shortage of school spirit.

Wieneck says she wants “for people to be excited to be at USF.” However, she says that the total lack of school spirit within the student body deters students from getting involved.

Wieneck says that students just don’t care about representing their school; “when you talk to students about our school, it tends to be more negative than positive.”

She says one reason for this is because of how spread out the campus is. She also says that there are no incentive for students who live off-campus to come to main campus to participate because there are never enough activities happening to make it worth their while.

Charles Skinner, a transfer student counselor and the admissions coordinator for USF, says that USF is appealing to transfer students because of the small classes sizes and fact that every class is taught by a “real professor” and not a grad student, as is the case in many UC and CSU classes.

According to Skinner, the process for transferring to USF is a “fairly easy process.” He says that USF requires students trying to transfer in to have completed at least 24 semester credits or 36-quarter credits completed at a separate college and to have maintained a 2.75 GPA during that time.

Skinner says that USF’s process for transfer students is much more flexible than other California State Universities (CSU) or UC’s, and that the transfer staff is very accessible to potential students if they have questions.

And it shows too. Looking at the statistics from last year, over sixty percent of transfer students who applied were accepted, which is comparable to the sixty-six percent of freshman admitted, according to U-Can, a university and college accountability network on the web.  

As opposed to other CSU’s and UC’s, Skinner says that many of the classes transfer students take at other colleges count for same general education or major courses at USF. 

But, Melissa Baron disagrees with Skinner. “The university makes it difficult to fill requirements with transferred courses. They have very specific ideas of what a class syllabus must contain to fill a university requirement.” She says as a result, “I’ve had to retake classes like college writing. This makes it very difficult to graduate on time.”

One of the classes Baron is talking about is Writing 250, which is a requirement for all transfer students. Frazer, sums up the general attitude transfer students have towards having to take 250 when he says that he “doesn’t mind taking it, but it has set [him] back in my [major].”

For Melissa Baron, it was what USF offered in terms of education that drew her attention. She says she applied to USF because they “promised small class sizes and intimate education. It’s very important to me to be in small programs where I can develop relationships with professors.”

Another aspect that Baron liked was the richness of the Media Studies department. “I liked that the program covered a variety of ways to look at media- theory, criticism, research, and creation,” she says. “I also wanted to be in the program because instead of creating separate programs for film and journalism, [USF] puts all the programs together allowing students to pick and choose their skill set.”

Baron says she felt too constrained in her major at Northeastern and felt “the major was too specific and didn’t allow me to develop a wide array of skills for the job market.”  She says that after she graduates from USF, she is confident that she will be prepared to find a job in the media field.

The Media Studies department was a dealmaker for Christina Hammill. She says” [USF] is one of the few schools that offers Media Studies as a major instead of just Communications, which is too broad and vague than what I want.”

Most students say they have had much better experiences with their professors here at USF than their previous colleges. Baron has nothing but praises for the professors in the Media Studies Department, “The Media Studies professors have a wealth of knowledge and resources that they make available to students. They teach engaging and difficult classes. My professors have made themselves available to me for help and their classes have actually challenged me; a first in my college experience.”

Baron has particularly liked Professor David Silver in the Media Studies Department. She says that he taught his Introduction to Media Studies “in a way that got you really excited about media and the different individual interests you can pursue in media.”

On the other hand, Baron said she’s “had mixed feelings about [the] professors for the [general education] classes. Some have been great and others have not.”

Brandon Martinez, a transfer student from USC, agrees that it can be hit or miss with many of the teachers. But he says some of the courses are a “joke. It’s too easy.” He feels that some teachers “spoon feed the students… and make it a little too easy to skate through USF.”

Contrasting Baron, Martinez says, “I don’t think USF has given me the same education that USC did. USF hasn’t challenged me so far and I only have one semester left.” Yet, Martinez made it clear that he was only at USF to finish up his remaining units and graduate; he wasn’t interested in the political aspect of the school.

However, Baron doesn’t feel that the professors are solely at fault. Nonetheless, she does agree that courses outside her major do not measure up. She says, “I’m unsatisfied with the classroom experience. I often feel my classmates don’t feel compelled to do the work and it detracts from classroom discussion.”

Despite all of the negative things said about USF, all of the transfer students mentioned that they plan on staying and graduating from USF. Christina Hammill knows USF is the place she wants to be, “being a transfer [student] is pretty hard, academically and socially, but it’s completely worth the troubles to be a school you enjoy.” She says “when you transfer, you start out behind and there’s a lot of work to catch up. But it’s better than stewing in a college you don’t like.”

Jared Frazer believes that coming to USF was the best possible choice he could have made. He says “I admire the commitment to excellence the faculty and school exhibits, [which] makes me want to mirror that excellence in my work so I can adequately represent USF in the future.”


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