BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — Cal State Bakersfield is one of six CSU schools involved in creating a new plan for increasing transfer student success. The effort is funded by a $350,000 grant from the College Futures Foundation in partnership with the James Irvine Foundation.
CSUB is working with the Dominguez Hills, East Bay, Los Angeles, Northridge and Pomona campuses, all led by Cal State San Marcos.
Each school is identifying community colleges they can partner with for a program that allows students to successfully transfer and graduate with an ADT. That’s an associate and bachelor degree earned within four years, starting at a community college before transferring to a CSU.
CSUB currently partners with Bakersfield College and is working on adding Porterville, Taft and Antelope Valley colleges as well.
Senior Admissions Officer and Transfer Student Success Coordinator Natasha Harris said these partnerships will make a big difference for students.
“It’s a big partnership because as long as we’re working together, we’re communicating, we’re sharing our data, we're co-advising our transfer students and that’s the key part in their success. It’s when the university and the community college can come together, co-advise, and that ensures that our students have that seamless transition," said Harris.
The focus will be students who are underrepresented minorities, first-generation college students, and who are eligible for pell grants.
Harris said CSUB is proud to be leading the way for other CSU campuses.
"We’re all meeting and talking and seeing what we're doing on our campuses," she said. "We’re just learning and leaning on each other for how we can help each campus be successful, so we're learning from our different sister campuses and we're bringing in some new ideas and new things. [We're] looking forward to it," she said.
This past fall, CSUB launched an online tool that allows students to easily map out their degree pathway at the community college alongside the second half of their degree at CSUB. Harris said the whole CSU system is now looking to adopt it.
