How Can Librarians Aid Transfer Student Integration?: A Multi-Campus Study

Despite their commitment to serving unique campus populations, academic librarians have been slow to recognize the needs of one large demographic: transfer students. Transfer students often face challenges adjusting to the academic expectations of their new universities, as evidenced by the well-documented initial drop in GPA known as “transfer shock” (Ishitanti, 2008). Incoming transfer students are forced to navigate confusing systems in order to transfer course credits and enroll in courses, leaving these students feeling marginalized, rather than welcomed, by their new institutions (Chin-Newman & Shaw, 2013; Owens, 2010). In recent years, librarians have begun exploring how they might contribute to transfer students’ success. Besides outreach programming, information literacy (IL) instruction also could play an important role in helping transfer students integrate into the academic fabric of their new institutions. This article presents the findings from the first phase of a two-phase, multi-campus research project, examining the impact of IL instruction on transfer students’ sense of academic integration. This article uses survey data to investigate how IL instruction experiences impact transfer students’ sense of belonging as they start coursework at a new university, specifically through the lens of academic integration. This article also asks whether transfer students might derive some sort of benefit from having received IL instruction at their previous institutions, which might contribute to transfer student capital (Laanan, Starobin, & Eggleston, 2010). Results suggest that a wide variety of IL instruction experiences can significantly raise incoming transfer students’ confidence levels, their feelings of being supported, and their senses of fit. The findings do not suggest that IL instruction builds transfer student capital; the benefits derived from previous IL instruction experiences do not seem to outlast the transfer process.