Innovative New Position Helps CR Graduates Continue Education at HSU
College of the Redwoods students will have a new resource when the semester starts on August 20: a dedicated Humboldt State University employee working full time on the CR Eureka campus to help students prepare for eventual transfer to HSU.
Kailyn Doyle was hired this summer as the CR/HSU transfer specialist, a new position made possible by a state “Award for Innovation in Higher Education.” The Award was received by HSU for collaboration with Humboldt County Office of Education (HCOE) in promoting college-going in our community. Funds have been invested in several ways to enhance pathways for local students to attend HSU directly or by transferring from CR.
Doyle’s role will be to prepare students to continue their education after graduating from CR. She worked in residential life for Sonoma State University before this, where part of her role was overseeing housing for transfer students.
“Working with that population was fascinating,” Doyle says. “I began to recognize that transfer students weren’t coming in prepared. We didn’t have a built-in support system that we do for other new students.”
Now she’ll be working from the other side of that pivotal point in student’s lives, helping them to take the next step.
“My goal is for students to know they don’t have to wait until they’re ready to transfer to come to me,” she says.
Before they even have their first day at CR, Doyle says, students can be preparing for HSU by planning to take the right courses and thinking about their career goals. She’ll be able to help them navigate enrollment requirements, the application process, and things like financial aid, which is a more complicated process at HSU than at CR. Far more than a recruiter for HSU, she’ll act as an information resource and point interested students toward the right resource for all things HSU.
Doyle will also prepare programming and events that will bring CR students to HSU, and HSU staff and faculty to CR.
More transfer students come to HSU from CR than any other school, and this effort aims to increase the enrollment of transfer students and make them more successful in their studies.
“This partnership represents an important opportunity to provide a smooth transfer process from CR to HSU,” says CR President Keith Snow-Flamer. “I appreciate that HSU President Lisa Rossbacher and Provost Alex Enyedi recognized the need to implement strategies to reduce barriers to upward transfer. With this initiative, our students now have a greater chance of achieving their educational goals.”
Enyedi said the idea for the position originated in his previous role as dean of Arts and Sciences at another university.
“In response to my (then) staff's reports that local community college students lacked easy access to information about our majors and programs, and clarity on pathways to enroll at our university, we created a face-to-face approach that brought the university to the community college campus,” Enyedi says. “This turned out to be more effective than distributing fliers or pointing students to a website. As provost at HSU, I learned in conversations with CR President Snow-Flamer that a similar approach could work in the Humboldt County community.”
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