Improve graduation rates of transfer students through improved course articulation, addressing performance gaps in challenging gateway courses, and directed academic advising.
Improve graduation rates of transfer students through improved course articulation, addressing performance gaps in challenging gateway courses, and directed academic advising.
Full-Time, Transfer Sophomore 3-year graduation rate (4-years total)
A Transfer Student Working Group, consisting of leaders from the Office of Instruction and Office for Student Affairs, conducted their work in AY2024-25 and presented a set of recommendations in August 2025 to evaluate and reimagine the transfer student experience at the University of Georgia.
UGA Admissions began using OneOrigin's Sia AIRR product starting in Spring 2025, which uses AI to extract the relevant data from college transcripts, to articulate that data to its UGA course equivalent, and then push this information into Banner/Athena, allowing a student to view it in DegreeWorks to monitor their path toward degree completion.
In Fall 2025, we created the Transfer Launch Seminar (TRLS 3001), a one-credit seminar course designed to help transfer students transition successfully during their first semester. The seminar fosters connections with faculty and peers, introduces students to UGA’s academic culture, policies, and resources, and strengthens academic and professional skills through discussion-based learning. Each section’s topical content aligns with the instructor’s discipline (akin to UGA’s First Year Odyssey Seminars), and instructors deploy student success programming personalized to their student population – including connecting students with major-related activities, internships, and experiential learning. Students also attend campus events to engage with the broader university mission, while participating faculty receive support, compensation, and funding for out-of-class activities to enhance student engagement.
Implementation of the Transfer Student Working Group plan is underway in Fall 2025 and will be reported in future years. In advance of a broader implementation, a new student progress survey targeting challenging gateway courses with gaps in performance by transfer students (DFW rate > 15%) was implemented this academic year.
Instruction and Student Affairs are partnering to change the structure of Transfer Student Orientation in Summer 2026. This new structure will result in an expanded academic advising window for transfer students, allowing for more one-on-one academic advising time for incoming transfer students.
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