Beginning spring semester, Bradley will implement the Transfer Mentor Program to help new transfer students ease into life on campus. The program will mirror the student aides program.
“The student aides on campus have a lot of responsibility for easing the transition for freshmen, and the new transfer aide concept takes that and applies it to the transfer student experience,” Gregory Haines, assistant director of Orientation and Advisement, said.
Through the program, new transfer students will be paired up with a transfer mentor. All mentors were transfer students to Bradley. Most pairings will be done based on the students’ majors but can also range from previous colleges to veteran status.
“That’s the thing – transfer students come from every different background that you could possibly think of,” Haines said. “Some of the assumptions include that they’re older, they want to be part-time or they want to get in and get out. We want the program [to be] highly customized to what the transfer students experience looks like.”
According to Haines, new transfer students will work with mentors for the first 10 weeks of their first semester on campus.
“We invest a lot of resources into freshman orientation, but for transfer students, that has to look different,” Haines said. “We are orienting them during their first semester, often throughout their first year. We have advising and registration workshops and other things we don’t really offer first-year freshmen because they’ve gone through a different process.”
Junior English education major Molly Brantingham transferred to Bradley from Phoenix, Arizona, during spring of 2015.
“I had an interesting experience while transferring to Bradley,” Brantingham said. “Luckily, I took part in a Transfer Student Orientation program a few days after arriving on campus, and that gave me a great baseline of information and resources.”
Brantingham has since become involved in helping new transfer students familiarize themselves with Bradley, joining the Transfer Student Advisory Council and working with Haines on various projects.
The Transfer Mentor Program will be choosing transfer mentors within the next week, according to Haines.
“The transfer aide is going to be there to contact the students, be sure they know how to contact their adviser, who their adviser is and have an appropriate set of checklist items to have before they meet with their adviser,” Haines said. “Transfer aides will also then be present at [transfer students’] orientations to help them with registration, for the students who come to a registration-based orientation.”
Bradley offers five to six transfer student orientation sessions each year. Two of these sessions include a registration process, while students are expected to pre-register for classes before the remaining three to four.
“For these sessions, the transfer aide will be on the phone with them helping them register, or they will be available if [the transfer student] wants to come to campus and meet their transfer aide,” Haines said.
Although Bradley’s Center for Orientation and Advisement has helped transfer students in the past, the Transfer Mentor Program will be the first peer-based organization of its kind at Bradley.
“It is the right time and place [for the program],” Haines said. “Having seen over one full academic year and the progression of how a student navigates the campus environment during the year, I’ve seen where we still might have some holes to fill.”
Haines said that he believes the new program is a successful investment of people’s time.
“I meet every transfer student who comes here, and that’s twenty percent of our new students every year,” Haines said. “If they just wanted to get in and out of school, they wouldn’t have chosen Bradley.”
