Cornell University - Achievements and Promising Practices

Cornell University Evaluation Overview

Location: Ithaca, New York

Student Body: 13,510 undergraduate and 6,290 graduate students

Name of Program: Pathway to Success

History of institutional work with community college transfer students:

Cornell has a history of accepting approximately 500 transfer students each year, with approximately one third from community colleges. Transfer students generally matriculate to the “contract colleges” and not into the “endowed colleges” which includes Arts and Sciences.

Community College Partners:

  • Borough of Manhattan Community College
  • Monroe Community College
  • Morrisville State College.
  • Nassau County Community College
  • Suffolk County Community College

Outreach:

  • Cornell hired a full-time Pathway to Success coordinator whose responsibilities are to conduct outreach to partner community colleges and develop and carry out programming for Pathway students.
  • Cornell launched a Pathway to Success Web site to provide targeted information about admissions, financial aid, program details, and profiles of community college transfer students enrolled at the University.

Recruitment:

  • Industrial Labor Relations (ILR) and Engineering admissions staff work closely with contacts at Monroe Community College to identify prospective transfer students.
  • Admissions staff in the school of Architecture, Art and Planning (AAP) works closely with a faculty member from the architecture program at Morrisville State College to identify students.

Pre-admission Assistance:

  • Engineering, AAP and ILR admissions staff initiate contact with students who have been identified as potential candidates for their programs; they provide continued support to students through the application process.
  • A member of the staff at the school of Engineering collected syllabi from all courses at Monroe and Morrisville and submitted them to the departments at Cornell for course pre-approval, resulting in advising guides for prospective transfer students.
  • Engineering admission staff advises Pathway students up front that they believe it will take them five semesters to graduate, allowing students better weigh their transfer options and make informed plans and decisions about transfer.
  • Architecture students from Morrisville State College interested in transfer are given the opportunity to visit the department at Cornell and meet with professors.

Application & Financial Aid Support:

  • Cornell plans to flag the applications of Pathway students so that they are read earlier than other transfer applications.
  • The Engineering admissions office flags the applications of Pathway students for a 48-hour turnaround as opposed to a two-week turnaround for other transfer applicants.

Post-admission Assistance:

  • The Pathway to Success program coordinator serves as a resource to students and plans year-round programs focusing on career development.

Internal Focus:

  • Unlike the College of Agriculture (CALS) IRL, and Human Ecology, which have transfer in their missions, Engineering does not, though the admissions person is working to change aspects of the culture within that program.

Institutional Commitment:

  • The full-time coordinator role creates a structure for recruiting and supporting community college transfer students, and has helped Cornell develop stronger relationships with its community college partners.

 

Achievements through Year 2:

  • The Pathway program is creating new pipelines for community college transfer at schools such as AAP and Engineering where pipelines had not existed before. Engineering admission staff members believe that the pipelines they have established with Monroe Community College will endure beyond the life of the grant.
  • Current CCTI students founded “Pathies”—a student organization whose purpose is “to provide appropriate activities in order to create a sense of community, belonging, and success for current Pathway to Success students at Cornell, as well as any and all potential future Pathway to Success students, interested in Cornell University.”
  • Cornell enrolled 30 students from Monroe and Morrisville in the first year of the program—an increase from 18 enrolling community college transfer students the year prior to the start of the grant.

 

Promising Practices:

  • The 48-hour turnaround for Pathway student applications in Engineering helps students make informed decisions about their transfer options.
  • Admissions at Cornell provide a special review process for Pathway applicants.

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