Shelbe Rodriguez 0:00
Welcome to the LU moment where we showcase all the great events, activities, programs and people right here at ÃÛÌÒÊÓƵ University. Welcome back to this week's episode of the LU moment. Listen guys, Transfer Week is coming up. That is Oct. 17. We are celebrating our transfer students and joining me today on the moment is Ryan Litchfield, assistant director of ÃÛÌÒÊÓƵ. He's gonna give us all the deets on what we can expect and what our students can expect for that week. Ryan, thank you for joining me on the LU moment. Thank you for having me. All right. So transfer week give us a little background what exactly is this week.
Ryan Litchfield 0:30
So national transfer week usually happens on the third week of October every single year. It's a week long event that celebrates transfer students across the country and brings awareness to the barriers that transfer student populations tend to face and hopefully brings the communities together to give them more access and just celebrate them in general.
Shelbe Rodriguez 0:51
Oh, so what kind of events can we expect for our students to take part in?
Ryan Litchfield 0:55
So we have quite a few students or a few students, a few events lined up for the week we have plugged in to ÃÛÌÒÊÓƵ and get energized, it's going to be a coffee and cocoa bar. This is on Monday, October 17. From 11:30 to 1, we're inviting departments to set up tables with us, we're gonna have coffee and snacks and tons of giveaways for students. We will have photo booth opportunities and it's just a good way for students to connect with one another, not only with transfer populations, but our regular students in general. We also are doing a T-shirt swap on Wednesday, Oct. 19 at 12:30 p.m. to 2 p.m. This is where transfer students can bring in their old university T-shirts. We want to give them similar ÃÛÌÒÊÓƵ University shirts, we want them to represent the red and white well, so we will swap out old T-shirts for new ones. So we invite all students to come out to that as well and get them a new ÃÛÌÒÊÓƵ University T-shirt. And for prospective students, we'll be doing transfer tours throughout the week, we'll be giving special gifts out to guests that do attend these do attend these tours with us. We want to celebrate them as they're trying to make that decision to jump over to a four-year institution.
Shelbe Rodriguez 2:02
Okay, how can our prospective students sign up for those tours?
Ryan Litchfield 2:05
They can go to lamar.edu/visit. There is a link on there that you can click to sign up for campus tours. If you're not available to come to one of those specific transfer tours, we do daily tours every single day, Monday through Friday.
Shelbe Rodriguez 2:20
And then we also have those cool virtual tours on there, right?
Absolutely. We'd love to have them come and see what the campus looks like through their own computer screen or their mobile phones.
You can get a feel for it right there. It's very interactive. I love that. I take it every now and again. Yeah. So here's a here's a quick question. I hear that fresh feathers is going to be joining in on some of those events. Give us a little background. What exactly is Fresh Feathers as a student organization?
Ryan Litchfield 2:54
It is a student organization. So Fresh Feathers was started out of the necessity to help transfer students make that transition to ÃÛÌÒÊÓƵ University. So that's neat there. Yes, yeah. So it was actually created by students for transfer students. Yeah. So this is this organization that welcomes in new students, they give them information about how to get involved on campus, how to stay involved on campus as well. They get all kinds of cool swag whenever they come in. So that way, you know, they're not looking like a, you know, former student from their previous institution, we want them to look like a new student. We give them lots of good information, again, on how to get involved and try to stay involved that way. But yeah, it's a really great organization. They are very involved. And we hope that more students end up coming. One of the things that they do like to mention is like, you know, most transfer students don't like to be known as a transfer student. Oh, you know, because while they might be transferring to ÃÛÌÒÊÓƵ, they're going to be a ÃÛÌÒÊÓƵ student. And so, you know, at that point, that's when they stopped being a quote unquote, transfer student, they just become a ÃÛÌÒÊÓƵ Cardinal.
Shelbe Rodriguez 3:55
Yeah, I love that. And so, um, transfer week, that's just going to help those students kind of get a little more acclimated to Cardinal life. Right, right?
Ryan Litchfield 3:55
Right.
Shelbe Rodriguez 3:56
I love that. And so, I want to ask you, what advice would you give to prospective transfer students or even our current transfer students?
Ryan Litchfield 4:13
All right, gotcha. I have a lot of advice for transfer students. I don't know if we have enough time for all of this. But if I can, if I could give one major piece of advice to start with it would be just get involved where they want and you know, we have transfer orientation for students, which happens before courses begin. When transfer students come for that event, we would love to have them and see how they can get involved while they're here at orientation. It's the perfect time to meet other students, meet your professors and just see how you know you're going to adapt to ÃÛÌÒÊÓƵ University campus life. Yeah. Another opportunity for students is student work opportunity. So we have work study. We also have jobs that students can just work on campus. There's tons of jobs and we love the perspective of transfer students and we will love for them to know that they can get involved.
I have to give a shout out to my good friend Jocelyn Alvarado, who is a our current admissions marketing manager; she worked as a student worker, transfer student. And she brought in a lot of great perspective that helped us recruit and reach out to transfer students in a more positive light and help us make the transition for them a little bit easier. Yeah. And so again, she was a transfer student at one point, and now she's here at ÃÛÌÒÊÓƵ University helping us out reaching transfer students in a much better way. Oh, I'm sorry. And also, I always recommend students get to know your faculty. So you know, at ÃÛÌÒÊÓƵ University, we have small class sizes, and our faculty always just want to get to know you. And so the last two years of your program, are going to probably be your favorite professors. Me personally speaking from experience, my professors, my last two years were the absolute best. They want to know about your personal experiences as well from your previous institutions. So we want to, we want to celebrate you guys coming into ÃÛÌÒÊÓƵ University. But we also want you to feel at home and welcome. And our professors are a great way, are a great resource for doing that. For sure. scholarship opportunities are also available, a lot of students tend to forget about that in the shuffle of moving from one institution to another. We have a really amazing, simple system called My scholarships. So once students are admitted to ÃÛÌÒÊÓƵ University, they can apply for scholarships that way. And then we do have many scholarships that are geared towards transfer students know that. Yeah. And so again, a lot of students tend to think that there may not be so many opportunities, but here at ÃÛÌÒÊÓƵ University, we do have a lot.
Shelbe Rodriguez 6:39
Yeah. Or maybe they might think they don't qualify, or you know, oh, man, I haven't been here from the very start. So I probably don't qualify
Ryan Litchfield 6:46
right now. And that's, that's a that's a very common misconception that we want to help transfer students with it.
Shelbe Rodriguez 6:53
All right, Ryan, just debunk that for you. All right. So no, I think that's great advice. I definitely do. Because those are questions that I think a lot of students in general might have, but especially our transfer students resources, work study, organization, getting involved, financial aid, all of the things right, I think I need to coin that turn in all things, all the things. All right. And so what are some important things that these students should know about transferring? What do you think
Ryan Litchfield 7:21
it's never as scary, you know, more, or we tried to make it as simple as possible for students. We have a lot of resources here on campus to help them out not only with their coursework, but also help them just with the whole transfer process. Yeah, each transfer student has their own admission counselor. And I like to say that our admission counselors here at ÃÛÌÒÊÓƵ are there lifelines to the university before they get started here. So if there's ever any situation where transfers are where students feel uncomfortable, or they might need some additional assistance, they can reach out to their local admission counselor who's right there, Monday through Friday there to help them out and help them through this process.
Shelbe Rodriguez 7:58
So they follow them throughout their journey after the transplant process. Once they're here, once they get here getting acclimated and then they take off, right.
Ryan Litchfield 8:06
And they're the professionals with like all the information too. So if you have any questions about particular programs, scholarships, financial aid, living on campus, getting involved on campus, things like that, they are a great start for for students to to reach out to you.
Shelbe Rodriguez 8:20
All right, perfect. And so is this our first time doing transfer Week events?
Ryan Litchfield 8:24
No, we've actually celebrated transfer students a lot in the past, I can tell you that, from the admissions office perspective, we've done group tours previously, before where we've been in other institutions out, we always do special tours for students who come to campus from other institutions like that. And so we we like to post things on social media, we like to highlight our special transfer students that that have come here and have made an impact on our university. And so, ya know, this is something that we love to celebrate. And we love to do it every single year and hope to continue doing it in the future.
Shelbe Rodriguez 8:58
And from your perspective, what do you think is the most important aspect about transfer week? Why do you think it's so important to host something like that?
Ryan Litchfield 9:06
I think it's just really important because, you know, transfer students at institutions they can, they can sometimes be overlooked. There are students that are already experienced in going to college. Yeah. And so, you know, there's a lot of expectations, there are a lot of preconceived notions that these students are able to just jump right into the classroom and finish off their last two years. But we see that, you know, research shows us that the students have a lot of barriers in front of them, because they are sometimes overlooked. And so we want to be able to break down those barriers and so transfer week helps celebrate that brings us together as a community and it makes us celebrate the students while making that transition just a little bit easier for them,
Shelbe Rodriguez 9:49
making it a little bit easier. Well, I'll tell you what, Ryan, I sure am looking forward to transfer a week I know that our students or our prospective students, give us a piece of advice for prospective students who might be enlist Turning to this radio interview right now. I sure hope you are. Are the parents of prospective students? What exciting events can we expect from admissions coming up?
Ryan Litchfield 10:08
Great. I always tell students, parents, counselors, whomever Yeah, come visit campus, we have, like I mentioned already, we have daily campus tours, we have a really great event coming up on Saturday, November 12, called Cardinal view, it is the best time for any student, any age, any population, to come see campus to see all of our majors on display, they can meet professors and students, student organizations, learn about everything ÃÛÌÒÊÓƵ related, and I think it is the absolute best time to come. It's a free event, it's on a Saturday, so we try to make it a little bit more convenient for everybody to come out. But we would love to have everybody come and see us at Cardinal view.
Shelbe Rodriguez 10:45
That's right. Karma view is our largest open house event that we host here at the university. Like Ryan said, Perfect time to come on out. You can get to know some of your professors, future faculty members, your Dean's, and you'll get the student perspective, get that one on one time with current students, you know, and so what better time to do it like Ron said, come on out, see yourself here at LU get your read on and come on out. We would love to have you and so Ryan, where can our prospective cards can go to register for Cardinal view?
Ryan Litchfield 11:15
Yeah, they can go to LaMotta edu backslash Cardinal view, forward slash Cardinal view. I'm sorry.
Shelbe Rodriguez 11:20
It's the Martin EDU forward slash Cardinal view. Right. That is correct. All right. So we're looking forward to it and I'm looking forward to transfer week. Ryan, thank you so much for joining me on the moment this week. Anytime. Thank you so much. Alright, guys, so again, just a reminder, um, as Ryan mentioned, the Cardona review that's taken place November 12. Right here on campus, we hope to see our feature cards make it on out to campus. So here's some more exciting events taking place. The College of Business is hosting a special lecture series featuring LU alum Alfonso Alexander. Here's a little background on Mr. Alexander. He is the chief ethics and Diversity Officer of the National Association of State Boards of accountancy until that's NASA, where he oversees strategic diversity initiatives in ethics compliant, so super exciting. We want the community to come on out to this event. It's not just students, faculty and staff, but we invite the community to come on out to this free lecture series is going to be hosted right here on campus in the Galloway business building Landis auditorium, October 28, from 1245 to 1:45pm. Come on out. Another Lecture Series taking place that same day that same afternoon, is going to be a leadership speaker series featuring speaker of the Texas House of Representatives Dade Phelan another exciting event and that's going to be in the Center for Innovation commercialization and entrepreneurship building that CSE room 113 October 23 to 5pm. Again, come on out, it's open to the community. It's free. We want you guys to come on out and enjoy and, and tune in to Speaker speaker Phelan. Here's a few things that we have going on. On the fine arts side here though you the Department of Theatre and Dance is presenting a Lost Lake their second production of the year. I also want you guys to keep your keep your eyes peeled for the fall and recovery faculty dance concert. And for those tickets, you can visit lamar.edu forward slash events click on fine arts and from there it's easy breezy. Alright guys, we have just about a few more minutes. We got some time for some updates. Right. I have to let you know what's been happening right here at the nest. Listen, I'm ÃÛÌÒÊÓƵ University recently welcomed Dr. Samuel Jader. As the Senior Associate Provost of Academic Affairs, he joined the University on October one, we're so excited to have him until Dr. Jader will be working closely with academic affairs to push our graduate programs retention and student success. And so that's something we can all look forward to excited about that. Here's what collegia 100 recently inducted 13 new members are baker's dozen on September 27. And so listen, this organization has hit the ground running since it was chartered in February of 2021. And so welcoming new members exciting things happening there. And here's another exciting thing Leu TV news. Remember that amazing documentary they will talk about us the Charlton polar story that premiered back in February of this year. Well, that documentary has been accepted into multiple film festivals. And so this fall is going to be a busy year for LU. TV and our students who were a part of that project. So exciting things Listen, guys, for more updates on what's happening here at ÃÛÌÒÊÓƵ University. You can visit lamar.edu forward slash news and we got you covered. If you are just tuning in or couldn't stick around for the entire interview, don't worry, I got you covered. Just search URL you moment right there on Spotify or here comes the famous line wherever you get your podcasts and as always be sure to follow us on social media. It's ÃÛÌÒÊÓƵ University. That's our username you know it. Alright, so this is Shelbye Rodriguez, Public Affairs Manager here at LU the pride of Southeast Texas.
Transcribed by