SpeakSC focuses on helping transfer students

Undergraduate Student Government held a SpeakSC forum, Wednesday night in the Ronald Tutor Campus Center, to allow transfer students to discuss their experience at USC and suggest improvements.

The panel was led by Kairos Llobrera, lead academic adviser for academic counseling services through USC undergraduate programs. The discussion was moderated by Katherine Wilcox, USG assistant director of external affairs.

Many students at the forum inquired about current and future programs to be implemented for transfer students. Llobrera explained that his office is currently developing the Transformation Series, a program that intends to help transfers network or get information about programs such as study abroad, which transfers often struggle with because of their limited time before graduation.

“[The Transformation series] is a series of workshops that we’re trying to put on,” Llobrera said. “They address the more pressing issues or the more important resources that we feel that [transfer students] might need.”

One student asked Llobrera to specify which part of the transfer experience needs the most improvement. He responded by stating that it is imperative that the process of transferring units from other colleges and universities to USC be streamlined so transfer students are able to graduate on time.

“The biggest challenge that I see for transfer students is getting their transfer courses to count for USC requirements,” Llobrera said. “As an academic adviser, because we want you to graduate, for me the biggest challenge I think has been figuring out what courses you’ve taken can transfer and fulfill GE requirements because USC is an expensive place, and we want [transfer students] to get the most out of your experience here in the limited time that you are here.”

As the discussion moved to the social aspect of the transfer experience, students in the audience were asked to suggest ideas for making the transition easier for transfer students.

Alex Breitbart, a sophomore transfer from Bergen Community College, suggested that reserving a floor in current freshman dorms for transfer students would make it easier for transfers to network and gain exposure to extracurriculars.

“When you have the freshman dorm experience, you see fliers and a lot more stuff around,” Breitbart said. “You’re kind of in an environment where all of this information is readily available to you. I think [a floor exclusively for transfer students] would really be like a cure-all.”

Llobrera closed the discussion by stating that the forum provided many interesting ideas for him to work with.

“I thought the discussion was very productive and informative, especially from our side in Academic Counseling Services, to be able to craft programs and implement initiatives that would help transfer students,” he said.

According to USG Vice President and President-Elect Rini Sampath, the forum was modeled after the spring admit discussion that was held in January of last year. Sampath noted the impact that particular forum had on the creation of USG projects geared toward spring admits. She explained that she is optimistic that the transfer student forum will produce the same effect.

“I will say this past year our focus has been on spring admits, and that could probably stem from the fact that, that was our first spring admit forum that we hosted,” Sampath said. “Moving forward with the spring admit forum, we were able to take on so many projects like fall housing and the potential of integrating spring admits on campus better. But I’m really glad that this forum is taking place because it’s finally time that we started talking about transfer students.”

Sampath further noted that the timing is ideal for USG to start focusing on transfer students because the organization gained valuable experience working on programs to benefit spring admits in the last year.

“I think that we didn’t want to get too scattered in all of the different projects that we did have this past year, so it was definitely timed right in that we wanted to make transfer students a focus for the second portion of our year since we’ve worked so much bringing light to spring admit issues, so I think it’s the right time,” she said.