Seminole State hosts librarian collaboration for transfer student success

Librarians from across Central Florida colleges came together this spring at the Seminole State College of Florida Sanford/Lake Mary Campus in a first-ever meeting of its kind to discuss how libraries can contribute to transfer student success.

Students that change colleges can sometimes undergo a transfer shock when they arrive, causing them to suffer academically, especially when transferring to a larger campus. Seminole State hosted the University of Central Florida and fellow Florida College System colleges in the area including Lake-Sumter State College, Valencia College, Daytona State College, College of Central Florida and East Florida State College. 

“Certainly, we all want to share our associate degree students’ success as they transition to UCF,” Seminole State President Dr. Georgia L. Lorenz said during the opening remarks of the meeting as she spoke to the different school representatives. “We want to help them gain meaningful employment and become informed citizens, and preparation is always key to achieving any goal. Today’s initiative to share with each other, learn from each other, with the end goal of supporting transfer student success is an essential first step.”

The collaboration meeting was organized by Dr. Karen Kaufmann, Seminole State’s faculty librarian of research and instruction, and Peggy Nuhn, the UCF connect librarian based at Seminole State. Both saw a need for creating a standard background in information literacy – a student’s skill to locate, analyze and communicate information effectively – amongst the colleges. 

“Think of ways to align, perhaps not curriculum per se,” Kaufmann said, “but how can we ask those same questions with our partners across institutions to get that conversation moving and make progress.” 

Facilitating open communication between the colleges was a major goal of the meeting as librarians from the seven colleges regularly broke into smaller roundtables to discuss what each institution felt they did well and where they struggled. Nuhn, who chairs the planning committee for the meeting, noted that they are expanding the committee for better representation among the partner colleges. They have plans to create a webinar that can be used across the Central Florida system as needed to ensure students who transfer will all have similar information literacy skills. The second annual meeting of librarian collaboration is scheduled for the spring of 2020.