University of North Texas

UNT’s National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students will take its annual conference to Jacksonville, Fla., this year in an effort to engage a wider audience.

The ninth annual conference will be Jan. 24-26 at the Omni Jacksonville Hotel.

“We hope that by holding the conference in different locations we’ll be able to attract new minds to the transfer discussion,” says George Niebling, assistant director of the institute. “The national education agenda is focused on better preparing Americans for the increasingly competitive and technical global job market; recruiting, retaining and graduating transfer students is key to the success of this initiative.”

The conference schedule for Jan. 24 will feature multiple pre-conference workshops. The schedule for Jan. 25-26 will feature concurrent sessions, networking breaks and keynote addresses.

Willis N. Holcombe, chancellor of the Florida College System, will deliver the Jan. 25 keynote. He will discuss the status of transfer in Florida and the role of transfer in the national agenda. Robin Diana, president of the ACPA Foundation and an educational consultant with Teamworks, will deliver the address Jan. 26 (Wednesday). She’ll discuss the importance of efficient and effective transfer in the promoting a positive and rewarding educational experience for students.

The institute also will present the 2011 Barbara K. Townsend Dissertation Award at the conference. The award will be presented to Dr. Elizabeth LaClair, a regional recruiter at the University of Alabama, for her study on rural community college students and their perceptions of the transfer process. LaClair earned her doctorate from the University of Alabama.

The institute also will award two research grants at the conference. The recipients are Katie Granholm of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and Tola Ewers of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Granholm and her colleagues will study the relationship between specific student characteristics and their impact on student success. Ewers will investigate the undergraduate perceptions of science training and research.

UNT ranks fourth nationally among public universities in the number of transfer students it enrolls. The National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students was founded in 2003 by Bonita C. Jacobs and the university in order to better understand the factors affecting transfer student success. Today, the institute is the premier organization for the study of transfer students.

For more information, visit the 2010 NISTS Conference site.