Transfer Club Helps Students Connect with Various Universities

Start Here. Go Anywhere Thousands of students attend Amarillo College each year with the logical intention of using the two-year school as a viable springboard to universities that offer the advanced degrees they crave. In fact, about 60 percent of AC students express a desire to ultimately transfer their credits to a four-year university.

But uncertainties have a way of muddling pathways. Students wonder which university will be the perfect fit? Or which credit hours will be accepted? Or how does one even undertake the process of transferring from one school to the next?

Such uncertainties led a couple of administrators to spearhead something all new at AC this semester, a bar-raising student organization known as the AC Transfer Club (ACTC). It’s a club that welcomes the participation of all AC students, aiming to assist them in making the smoothest possible academic transitions.

It is catching on fast, with 125 members and counting.

“We want students to be successful, not just at AC, but wherever they go from here,” Heather Atchley, director of student life, said.

Naturally AC always has made transfer information readily available—even employs a transfer coordinator in Ernesto Olmos, associate director of advising. Olmos coordinates events that regularly bring university recruiters to AC campuses to meet with interested students.

But now, thanks to organizers Atchley and Olmos—and funding from the Student Activities Fee—the Transfer Club goes literally miles beyond that; they loaded up 18 club members in AC vans in mid-October and drove to Lubbock for a first-hand look at Texas Tech University. They met key personnel, had questions answered, got a glimpse of the future. 

“We had new AC students, some who are soon to graduate from AC, and even one student who has already been accepted to Tech but who had never even been there,” Atchley said. “It was exciting to see them make real connections, to become empowered and confident, and to gain valuable information.”

Olmos, as club sponsor, invites all AC students to email him at efolmos@amarillocollege.net. That’s all it takes to become a member of the club and be privy to emails detailing upcoming events, such as a November visit to West Texas A&M University that’s in the works.

An overnight visit to the Dallas area is being planned for the spring semester, a multi-university tour that will certainly include a stop at the University of North Texas, a popular transfer destination for AC students.

“We are looking mainly at trips to those universities that historically have been hot spots for AC students,” Olmos said. “Eastern New Mexico University is another school we hope to visit down the road.

“Visiting strange places alone is uncomfortable for some, but going there with someone you know really raises the comfort level. And even students who were not previously acquainted start to connect during a road trip. By the time we get where we’re going, we’ve created a sort of transfer community.”

The ACTC has plenty to offer its membership besides travel opportunities, for which a nominal fee can be expected: each paid $5 for the sojourn to Tech. Overnight trips naturally will cost a little more. Olmos keeps his mailing list—the membership—apprised of when university recruiters will be at AC, when other transfer type opportunities arise, including the trips, and when the club has meetings or workshops, like those that are in the works to fill out transfer applications for admissions and scholarships.

And looking a bit further ahead, a Transfer Fair is already on the calendar for Feb. 9, 2016, and Olmos points out that about 17 universities were represented last year at a similar event staged at AC.

The AC Transfer Club is growing fast, all right, because it’s swiftly become clear to the students taking part that this is an organization that really is going places.

 

October 30, 2015