Talking Stick - May/June 2011 - 20

RES LIFE
and because they come primarily from outside the area, they need housing. Coupled with long-term plans to house half the campus’s students, the need to be more purposeful in housing transfer students in particular became evident. The result was an increase in transfer student applications, which resulted in the campus becoming the second most applied to school within the state system. Though it’s important to understand the unique characteristics and needs of transfer students, it’s also important to remember that they still have a lot in common with the general student population. “Keep in mind that transfer is something that a student does, not something that a student is,” says Mark Cunningham, the director of housing and dining services at the University of California-San Diego. “While these students do have many unique needs and wants, in fact they share many if not all the same needs and wants of other college students, and we need to have the same resources available to them as we do for any of our resident students plus some that are specific to them as a group.” For Cunningham and his department, that meant accommodating transfer students who wanted many of the classic first-year experiences and had many of the same issues and concerns. Transfer students also have issues in common with upper-level students, such as scheduling, finding internships, and career planning. One obvious difference between transfer students and the traditional first-year students is, of course, age; at the University of California-San Diego, 54 percent of the transfer students were of legal drinking age, compared to only 1 percent of the rest of undergraduate students in housing. Assessing student satisfaction and collecting feedback is exceedingly important to direct these relatively new programs. Information collected at Western Illinois through focus groups, surveys, and individual interviews clearly points to the positive impact of such programs, as students often stated that living on the transfer-year-experience floor eased their transition, reduced some of the stress of adjusting to a new school, and helped them get involved on campus. A Transfer Year Experience pilot project was launched in 2009 at
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Help ACUHO-I strengthen community
ACUHO-I understands the strength of community, and on Saturday, July 9, our volunteers will give back to the city of New Orleans. Be a part of one of three invigorating and inspiring volunteer opportunities. Learn more about these worthy organizations and how to register online. www.acuho-i.org

St. Bernard Project
Help rebuild a family’s home All-day service opportunity

New Orleans City Park
Maintain and restore the park Half-day service opportunity

Arc of Greater New Orleans
Sort donated Mardi Gras beads Half-day service opportunity

Thank you to our Community Service Project Sponsors: Balfour Beatty Campus Solutions, Balfour Beatty Construction, Capstone Companies, PGAL, and the ACUHO-I Foundation.

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TALKING STICK
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Talking Stick - May/June 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Talking Stick - May/June 2011
