Our Legacy: Creating Community, Elevating Voices, Transforming Transfer

Written by

Janet L. Marling, Ph.D.

NISTS

In 2002, if you worked with transfer students, you were likely the only person at your institution with "transfer" in your title. There was little research outside the community college sector to guide you, and resources tailored to your unique challenges were scarce. No dedicated transfer conferences to attend. No community to join. No common language to define your work or professional identity.

The millions of transfer students were invisible in the national higher education conversation. At the University of North Texas, where transfer students comprised 52% of the undergraduate enrollment, Dr. Bonita C. Jacobs, Dr. Janet Marling, and their colleagues searched for resources to serve them better and came up short. “There really wasn’t anything available, “Dr. Jacobs recalls. “So I said, ‘we’re going to do a transfer conference!””

And so began a 23-year journey.

In February 2003, more than 300 professionals from 39 states and Canada converged at UNT for the first National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students conference. The relief in that room was palpable. As Lee Colquitt recalls, "I remember being there thinking, 'Wow, this is a lot of people that do care about transfer students.' And that was encouraging in and of itself." The collective realization echoed through every conversation: I didn't know how many of us were out there.

That first NISTS gathering established what would become our enduring purpose: to bring together diverse stakeholders, including two-year and four-year institutions, researchers and practitioners, administrators and faculty, and corporate and foundation partners in service of transfer students. We centered student voices, and disrupted the isolation that kept professionals from connecting.

For two decades, our annual conference remained the heart of the organization as NISTS evolved into something a much larger movement encompassing three foundational commitments: creating community, elevating voices, and transforming how higher education approaches transfer.

Creating Community

From that first conference, we understood that transfer professionals truly needed each other. They needed a professional home that also fed the soul. So we set out to build one.

The need was urgent. Transfer professionals wore many hats. Their work was undervalued. They had limited options when they hit barriers or needed to know if their innovative idea had merit. Heather Adams described the early days of her transfer role as feeling "really alone in the work." She recalls her first NISTS conference as "three days of bliss. I was like, oh my gosh, I've found my people! This is it!"

As the primary vehicle for community engagement, the conference grew from 300 attendees to nearly 1,000 at its peak. But size was never the point. Connection was. Mark Allen Poisel remembers some of the earliest conferences: "We were small enough that we could literally just go to a restaurant all together. And Bonita would walk around and literally talk to each person individually. And I think that was a key component that the conference maintained even as it got larger is that focus on the individual."

In those conversations, formal and informal, our community of transfer professionals found more than friendship. They found their professional identity. Bernard Huggins reflects on what this meant for his career trajectory: "NISTS formalized the fact that transfer is a career that you can [pursue]. I could do transfer work for the rest of my life and be really fulfilled and satisfied."

The annual conferences intentionally disrupted higher education's tendency to work in silos. We brought together diverse functional areas and institutional types in ways that rarely happened elsewhere, with a particular focus on co-locating research and practice.

Through meaningful interactions, researchers found their questions shaped by practitioners' real-world challenges. Practitioners found their instincts validated by emerging scholarship. Dr. Alexandra Logue notes what made this unusual: "There were both researchers and practitioners present in one conference. We felt [our research] was only important to the degree it could be used by practitioners." That marriage of research and practice became foundational to how NISTS and the transfer field evolved.

Dialoging across functional areas, roles, institutions, and systems was integral to our success. We did more than just facilitate these conversations. We insisted on them. Transfer was too complex and too multifaceted to be solved by any single constituency working alone. Bernard Huggins notes, "With the conference, you're able to bring…all these folks together. So that we start to learn about what others are doing…[and] we realized that despite our geographical dispersement, despite our institution type, despite our institution size, we have a lot of shared challenges and concerns."

As the years progressed, our community became its own web of connections. The spaces we created became the foundation for larger, community–built networks that extended far beyond any single conference:

• The Ohio Transfer Council strengthened through connections made at NISTS gatherings.

• In California, where community college practitioners were largely unaware the organization existed, Dr. Darla Cooper made it her mission to change that. Over the next several years, their conference participation grew significantly.

• When nine University of California (UC) transfer center directors attended our Atlanta conference, all working for the same system, yet never having met, had lunch together, it led to the creation of the UC Transfer Success Coalition, which continues today.   

• Heather Adams wanted that connected feeling she experienced at the conference year-round, so she started a Facebook group that became Transfer Nation, a thriving online transfer community.

As Dr. Mark Allen Poisel observes, "NISTS's impact is multiplied every time somebody moves [from one institution to another]. Professionals take what they learned to new campuses, spreading innovations across the country. They build state networks. They form institutional coalitions. They became each other's networks and professional lifelines.

NISTS built the home and opened the doors, and you all created the community that turned isolation into collective momentum.

Elevating Voices

Creating legitimacy for transfer work itself became essential, with NISTS serving to solidify transfer as a distinct higher education specialization and research discipline.

Transfer Professionals

We provided transfer professionals a forum where they could speak without judgment, share challenges without shame, and celebrate successes without skepticism. Professionals who felt isolated on their campuses discovered they had expertise worth sharing.

That validation transformed careers. When Bernard Huggins' transfer department was being shuttered, he chose to present at the NISTS conference anyway. During that session, a future colleague saw his work and reached out about a job opening. "If it wasn't for that conference presentation, I would not have been able to continue my passion for transfer work," he reflects.

For too long, transfer-focused work had not been prioritized, even if it was part of the institution’s mission. The NISTS community helped challenge that narrative, and in return we equipped professionals with the language, data, and frameworks to confidently use their voices. We then recognized their influential work through the Bonita C. Jacobs Transfer Champions Awards.

Research and Scholar-Practitioners

Research was a cornerstone of NISTS’s founding. At UNT, Institute faculty and graduate students conducted original research, and the Barbara C. Townsend Dissertation Award was created to recognize exemplary transfer scholarship. Research grant awards were incorporated during the last 13 years, keeping the community on the cutting edge.

The conference offered researchers a dedicated venue to share their work—not buried in a general higher education conference, but front and center where practitioners who needed it could engage with it. Webinars and professional development activities were a vehicle for additional exposure and ongoing collaboration.

John Fink describes the symbiotic relationship we cultivated: "I was going to the conference to share my findings. What sort of surprised me in my first year, but I kept on going back for more and more, was just all the ideas I was getting as a researcher…the questions that were bubbling up from being in conversation with practitioners [who] were working with students every day...From 2016 to like 2019, I just had this incredibly productive period as a researcher. And I really sort of tie a lot of that to being at the NISTS conference every year."

Scholar-practitioners were the focus of the Post-Master's Certificate in Transfer Leadership and Practice at the University of North Georgia, the first and only doctoral-level credential of its kind in the country. Designed it to fill a gap for professionals needing specialized knowledge coupled with practical application. NISTS welcomed six cohorts of scholar-practitioners between 2018-2025, with 23 of the students going on to pursue doctoral studies in UNG’s Ed.D. in Higher Education Leadership and Practice and at other institutions.

Renee Esparza was part of that first cohort: "It gave me the academic background to feel confident in my position. And at that time, I was the director of transfer services. And then that actually led me to continue on to get my doctorate in higher education leadership and practice at UNG. And Dr. Janet Marling served as my major dissertation advisor."

Students

Most importantly, NISTS elevated student voices. In 2011, the National Transfer Student Ambassadors program was introduced by incorporating transfer students into the annual conference to tell their stories. Their voices enhanced the conference curriculum and reminded us to keep their lived experiences top of mind.

Leslie Daugherty emphasizes this commitment: "What NISTS has always put at the center is how do we actually listen to what students are telling us and make sure that their needs are embedded in every single pathway. And so, not only were we able to do that by them bringing in transfer students to the conference to tell their own story, but then also for us to take that going forward."

Celebrating the student voice was never more prominent than during National Transfer Student Week. Debuting in 2017 and celebrated annually during the third week of October, NTSW gave institutions and organizations a framework to spotlight transfer students and the professionals who support them. We provided ready-made marketing materials and conversation starters. The event helped make transfer students visible in new ways, always encouraging others to seek out their perspectives.

NISTS amplified the voices and gave them authority. You used them to advocate, educate, and demand change.

Transforming Transfer

The field evolved. We evolved with it, and we pushed our community to evolve, too. As research and literature grew, we shifted from teaching WHAT transfer is and WHY it matters to helping professionals DO something about it with strategies for HOW to do it.

In the early years, we focused on fundamentals. Many institutions didn't understand transfer students' unique needs and treated them as an afterthought. Ill fitting policies and programs were replicas of first-year focused efforts rather than created for diverse mobile learners. We synthesized emerging research and brought clarity to a field that had little foundation.

As understanding grew, we moved into action. We challenged institutions to think beyond credit articulation and embrace the holistic transfer student experience. We asked questions like: What barriers exist? How do we remove them? What support do students need not just to transfer, but to thrive?

We elevated vocabulary and approaches that didn't exist before. And then we created practical tools to support the work. Our Knowledge Center became a repository not just of conference archives but of frameworks, templates, assessment tools, and implementation guides.

Leslie Daugherty emphasizes the practicality of our approach: "So many organizations put out tools. And they're all lovely...But NISTS, they're practical. And you can use them and you can understand them and you can apply them immediately. And so I believe it's because, right, that they are practitioners as well that they recognize that that's what people need."

We also created platforms for others to share their work and expand the reach of good ideas. We partnered with organizations like NODA, NACAC, AACRAO, NACADA, the Gardner Institute, College Board, and the National Resource Center for the First-Year and Students in Transition. We welcomed corporate sponsors who shared our commitment to transfer student success. Through the Bonita C. Jacobs Transfer Champions Awards, we celebrated individuals and institutions doing exemplary work, giving them visibility and credibility.

Our advisory board played a crucial role in this work, bringing diverse perspectives and helping us stay attuned to emerging needs. Mark Allen Poisel, who served on the board from its inception, recalls literally writing notes on napkins at that first meeting in the DFW airport about where the organization should go. The board brought together two-year and four-year institutions, researchers and practitioners, representing different regions of the country.

Throughout everything, we led with an equity lens—and we didn't let others avoid the uncomfortable truths. We made visible the literature supported gaps in transfer outcomes. We highlighted that community colleges serve disproportionately diverse populations, yet those students face significant barriers to transfer and completion. We put data front and center that couldn't be ignored. Toyia Younger emphasizes this commitment: "If NISTS was not doing this work, I would not have been a part of it for so long. If they were not being honest with themselves, and being honest with the institutions where we all work about the equity gaps that exist, I would not have wanted to be a part of this...They have always addressed, even issues that may seem somewhat controversial, they've addressed them head on...because they wanted to see all students succeed."

We helped our community frame transfer as a fundamental equity issue. We provided data that made gaps visible. We created language to talk about these disparities without making excuses for them. Melissa Swafford reflects on this work: "They've done a lot...highlighting some of the research that has been done. And just really highlighting the fact that our students who might be low-income, who might be from BIPOC populations or might not have access to a four-year institution, they often start at a community college. And they can be extremely successful. And yet the barriers that we put in place from moving from a two-year to a four-year, even makes it more difficult to continue to access that same level of education."

As the field matured, we pushed again—this time helping professionals create buy-in from skeptical stakeholders. It wasn't enough to know what to do; you needed to persuade administrators, faculty, funders, and others to invest in transfer initiatives. We equipped our community with frameworks for these conversations. We shared stories of success. We offered the tools to become advocates.

The transformation happened at multiple levels. Individual professionals grew in confidence and capability. Institutional policies and practices changed. States developed new approaches to transfer pathways.

Collectively, we disrupted the status quo. We spoke boldly about what needed to change. You took that foundation and transformed how institutions approach transfer. The progress is real—and the work continues.

What Endures and What's Next

For more than two decades, NISTS evolved to meet the field's changing needs. We started by answering "What is transfer?" and "Why does it matter?" We progressed to "What do we do about it?" and "How do we do it?" We equipped our community to create buy-in and advocate for systemic change. We moved from UNT to UNG, adapted to online formats, grew from 300 to nearly 1,000 conference attendees, and maintained our commitment through every transition.

Now, as the NISTS of 23 years is sunset and we prepare to pass the baton to our successors at the National Resource Center, know that what we built together endures. National Transfer Student Week continues, celebrated annually at institutions and by organizations across the country. Certificate program alumni carry forward a rich ability to apply research to practice. NISTS tools and resources remain available. Transfer Nation and other networks provide an ongoing community. Collaboration between organizations like NODA, AACRAO, NACADA, NACAC and the Gardner Institute persists. The language we elevated and named—"transfer champion," "holistic experience," "transfer-receptive culture"—is now standard vocabulary in higher education.

Most importantly, you endure. The professionals who found community through NISTS haven't stopped caring about transfer students. The researchers who presented their first findings at our conferences continue their work. The administrators who learned to advocate continue pushing for change. The transfer champions remain relentless.

The work ahead requires that relentlessness. The very definition of transfer must expand to encompass learning mobility—recognizing all types of learning regardless of where it happens. Credit for prior learning. Work-based learning. Dual enrollment. Learning that happens inside formal institutions and outside them. This broader vision is essential for serving contemporary learners whose educational journeys increasingly involve multiple institutions, multiple modalities, and multiple types of credentials.

This expansion represents the next chapter, but it's not one this iteration of NISTS will write. That responsibility falls to you and our colleagues at the NRC, and it requires ongoing dedication, innovation, and advocacy.

The transition of NISTS's work to the National Resource Center at the University of South Carolina will be a smooth one because this partnership honors our shared commitment to students in transition. What form our work ultimately takes remains to be determined. But your role remains essential.

You know what you need. You know what transfer students need. Use your voice and power. Demand the resources, space, and commitment that this work requires. Hold organizations accountable to transfer students and the professionals who serve them. Build the networks and coalitions that will carry this work forward. And support the NRC in co-creating the next chapter for NISTS.

Keep advocating. Keep connecting. Keep transforming.

The work continues. Together.