Overview

Many students who want to obtain bachelor’s degrees need to transfer credits from community colleges to four-year institutions to do so. They often cannot transfer some or all of their credits, and the fewer credits they can transfer, the longer they have to stay enrolled, the more it will cost them to earn their degrees, and therefore the less likely they are to reach their goal. Despite state policies designed to streamline the process, students face significant barriers to having their credits accepted and applied to degree requirements. Faculty members, who balance teaching, administrative roles, and research, play a pivotal role in credit-evaluation decisions. However, little research has explored how they approach these decisions or what factors influence their judgment. Understanding faculty roles is essential, as their decisions directly affect students' time to degree completion and overall college costs.

This project examines the role of faculty members in transfer credit evaluation at three University of Texas System institutions: The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), and The University of Texas at Tyler (UTT). Using a participatory, mixed-methods approach, the research investigates how faculty members make decisions and how departmental and institutional contexts shape these decisions. Institutional partners—Rebecca Karoff and Kevin Lemoine at the UT System Office of Academic Affairs, Amber Smallwood and Kimberly Van Arsdale at UTA, Gabriela Rodriguez and Heather Smith at UTEP, and Lance Williams and Colleen Swain at UTT—helped shape questions, interpret findings, and engage faculty and staff members with transfer responsibilities to identify implications for practice.