Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Nervous about starting at Michigan State? Worried about your class schedule, living away from home, or where to even start? The Spartan Orientation Station (SOS) is a podcast hosted by New Student Orientation staff and was created by students for students. This podcast will launch twice a week throughout the summer, and each episode will feature a unique interview with campus departments discussing their services, common misconceptions, and fun Spartan engagement opportunities. When you need help at Michigan State, it is okay to signal SOS! Don’t worry – MSU is there for you.
You're listening to the Spartan orientation station on Impact eighty nine FM, the podcast by students for students. Now this week's episode.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to the Spartan orientation station. Today, we're joined by the Transfer Student Success Center as well as the Transfer Experience Mentoring Program, otherwise known as TEMPO. My name is Kevin. I use hehim pronouns, and I'm pursuing a major in supply chain management. And I transferred to MSU from Oakland Community College around my second semester of freshman year.
Speaker 2:And now we'll have our guests introduce themselves.
Speaker 3:Hello, everyone. My name is Frank Tekili. I use hehim pronouns, and I am a graduate student in the Physics Education Research Group, and I am also the TEMPO program coordinator. I am also a transfer student. I transferred from three different community colleges in California, then I went to San Jose State University, and I was recently accepted here at Michigan State.
Speaker 3:University.
Speaker 4:Hello, I'm Delaney Dixon, and I use sheher pronouns. I'm currently going into my senior year here, and I am a mentor through Tempo, and I'm a genetics major as of right now, and I got my associate's at community college, and then I transferred to Loyola Chicago University for a year, and then I transferred after a year to here at MSU.
Speaker 5:Great. My name is Ashley Hewlett Lemke. I use the sheher series of pronouns, and I am actually the program coordinator with the Transfer Student Success Center. And I also am a transfer student. I actually transferred to Michigan State from Washtenaw Community College, and I completed an interdisciplinary humanities degree at Michigan State before going on and completing my TESOL degree at the graduate student level.
Speaker 5:So yeah, I've had an interesting transfer experience as well, and I will pass the mic over to my colleague, Doctor. Jackson.
Speaker 6:Thank you, Ashley. Hello, everyone. Doctor. Charles Jackson. I am the director of the Transfer Student Success Center.
Speaker 6:I use hehimhis pronouns. I was also a transfer student to MSU way back in the day. I completed my undergraduate degree here, master's, and also my doctorate as well. And before we start our podcast episode, I'd like to just remind all of our incoming transfer students about the Fall Welcome and Transfer Student Resource Fair in the MSU Ballroom. We have units and departments who will be participating in the fair, and they'll be providing all of our new incoming transfer students with information about the various services and resources they provide.
Speaker 6:We'll also have a DJ spinning tunes right outside the MSU Ballroom, and we will have sweet snacks throughout our time together just to get you ready for participation that'll be happening later on in the day. In our new student orientation newsletter that you will be receiving, there will be a registration QR code for you to sign up to attend. So sign up, everyone. Come out, meet all the transfer students, meet all of our campus partners, and then also members of our Transfer Student Advisory Board. Ashley, you want to talk a little bit about TSOP and what they do?
Speaker 5:I would love to. So our Transfer Student Advisory Board called TSOB for short, as we love our acronyms here at Michigan State. The Transfer Student Advisory Board is a group of current students at Michigan State who all transferred. They represent a variety of backgrounds coming from the community college level, four year college level, in state, out of state. We have some students who transferred from international institutions, some who transferred after two years at a previous institution, multiple institutions.
Speaker 5:We have TTSOB members who have caretaking responsibilities, who are maybe slightly older than the traditional 18 to 24 year old college student, so we love to have everyone represented in our Transfer Student Advisory Board. So the application is open, and when you're listening to this, the application is still going to be open through the August, So if you haven't had a chance to apply, it is available through the D-twelve modules that you completed as part of your new student orientation experience. The Transfer Student Advisory Board, we meet approximately every month, and then there are additional engagement opportunities to assist with programming throughout the academic year. The goal of our Transfer Student Advisory Board is really to offer the transfer student perspective to we as administrators and program coordinators to, one, plan what kind of programming is going to be the most appropriate and salient with our transfer student community at Michigan State, as well as garnering feedback on what are policy changes that need to take place. So that's a really important forum for us to be able to gather those student insights and then be able to share them both for our day to day operations and also so that we can relay that information to administrators to start to review policy changes and things of that sort that need to take place.
Speaker 5:I do also want to highlight that the Transfer Student Advisory Board experience is also validated after each academic year. TCEP members who are actively engaged throughout the academic year can have the experience validated on their Spartan experience record, and that is the MSU co curricular record. It's the official kind of record for Michigan State that is published in conjunction with the student's transcript, which of course we all know is the official document representing the grades that a student received for the coursework that they completed. The co curricular record is an official document that is of additional out of classroom type of experiences that may encompass undergraduate research, study abroad, community service learning, and also the transfer student advisory board position is also in the Spartan experience record as well. So we do hope that everyone will apply and we look forward to reading your applications.
Speaker 2:Sounds great. All right. So Delaney, could you tell us what tempo means to you?
Speaker 4:Yeah. So tempo is a way to build community for transfer students. Personally, for me, I was able to meet a lot of nice people and I've made a lot of friends, especially when I was a mentee coming in my first year here at MSU. Then when I transitioned into a mentor, I was still meeting a lot of nice people and I was able to help other transfer students maybe go on an easier path than I did, like trying to learn things by myself. So overall, I feel like Tempo is just a great place for transfer students to be able to feel safe and share their experience and get advice from other transfer students.
Speaker 4:And it's overall just a really nice place to join and talk about, you know, just life with other transfer students. And I think that's basically what it like encompasses, like what it means to me.
Speaker 2:Awesome. And, could you tell us a little bit more about why you chose MSU and about your major?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so I originally wanted to apply to Michigan state when I got my associates, but unfortunately I missed the deadline application. At the time, I wasn't for sure wanting to get my bachelor's at the moment, so it was still up in the air. So I did miss a few deadlines for certain schools and Michigan State was one of them. So when I got accepted at University of Loyola Chicago, I stuck it out there for a year. I wanted to give it a chance, see if I really liked it, and if I could like make that place like my home.
Speaker 4:And for me, it just wasn't the right fit. So I decided to still apply to Michigan State due to them like here, it's a, you know, a really high advanced research institution. There's a lot of resources here, especially for transfer students outside of research. And like the STEM field, there's like tons of opportunities up here. So that's why I picked MSU.
Speaker 2:Awesome. And Frank, could you give us a short intro or background about TEMPO?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So TEMPO, just a reminder, TEMPO stands for the Transfer Experience Mentoring Program. And the goals of TEMPO is to provide resources and navigational information and support to transfer students navigating the transition between community college and Michigan State University. What we do to achieve that is we pair mentors with mentees and they meet approximately once a week. And these connections really are that vehicle to drive that support and that relationship development that happens.
Speaker 3:And there's also what we call a weekly gathering space, which is a great opportunity for community building across all of the mentors and mentees in the program. And it's just a really good place to be. It provides an opportunity for transfer students to get involved on campus, feel connected, and feel like they have a place to go and be around other people who share those similar experiences. So I think that's generally what Tempo is.
Speaker 2:Okay. And going back to Delaney, could you tell us about any advice you would give to any students currently in the transfer process?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I would try to tell them to obviously regarding financial needs and everything like that, like whatever is possible for you, definitely do what is possible for you. But make sure you know what you're getting into for certain universities. It's very important to know, like, what you have access to in case, like, something does happen and you need those resources. Another thing would be to major wise stick with what you really like or what you feel comfortable with. But if they don't offer your major, you can look at other ones.
Speaker 4:But if you really feel passionate about that, like definitely find a school that like offers what you love to do.
Speaker 2:Great. Can you tell me a story or us a story about a time where you felt impacted by something or someone in the tempo program?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so when I first started off as a mentee, it was my first semester here. So I didn't know anybody up here at MSU. So my previous mentor, David, he was great. He gave me like a template of like these really cool study spots we could, like I could check out and some of his favorite restaurants around town, since I wasn't really familiar with the area. And I met a whole lot of really nice people through the program that have helped, I would say, helped me grow as a person and helped me feel more confident in being a transfer student.
Speaker 4:I would definitely say that this program and just the people in the program have made me feel like I belong at MSU. It feels more like a home instead of just like, I'm just at this university. I'm a complete outside.
Speaker 2:Excellent. And Frank, in the interviews you've been doing from students experiences with Tempo, what has been most powerful to you about the program and why would you want to continue?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great question. And just to echo what Delaney said, just having like a sense of community, just like having a supportive group of people to have students feel like they belong, to have MSU feel like a home. That's honestly one of the most impactful things to me. Also to add onto that, just having students feel like they could talk about imposter syndrome or feeling like they might not belong at a university. Having people who've gone through that pathway, other transfer students who have had similar pathways to these incoming transfer students, talking about their experiences has really supported really what I've seen for these students.
Speaker 2:And, what have people shared with you that made you feel that Tempol has really been impactful?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Folks shared, with me that they felt like they didn't have to navigate the university alone. And that was super important to me and it sounded really impactful for them. I know MSU can be a large place. It's a large university and having a student who's already been through that pathway and has already had those experiences.
Speaker 3:Having someone to guide you is really important. What I hear from transfer students in the program and also having a community, somewhere to be transfer students to have a place where they feel like they belong and they could fit into the MSU culture and be a transfer student with other transfer students. That's what I see is really impactful from Tempo.
Speaker 2:That is awesome. Thank you, Frank and Delaney for your responses. Yeah. Thank you.
Speaker 5:So I wanted to just share with everyone, if you are interested in being paired with a mentor for the next cohort, which will be the fall semester of twenty twenty four, I wanted to just alert everybody that the application to be paired with a mentor is actually located in the D2L modules that you would have completed earlier this summer. So just a reminder, the D2L course name is Summer twenty twenty four New Student Orientation Experience. So then after you are logged into the course, you'll go to section three, which is titled MSU Academic and Support Resources. From there, you're going to go to the transfer student resources section, which is only viewable by our transfer students. And then from there, there actually is a content page that is titled Learn About the Transfer Experience Mentoring Program Opportunity So from there, you'll actually see some nice pictures from those weekly gathering spaces that Frank was telling us about in addition to some information about the program as well.
Speaker 5:And then there actually is the hyperlink to the application as well. Make sure you check that out and apply.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to this episode of the Spartan orientation station on impact eighty nine FM. Let us know what you think by connecting with us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram at MSU underscore NSO.