Toughing out the brisk, cold weather, new faces are showing up around campus. The crowded sidewalks are due to the increase in students transferring to Otterbein. Students said they transferred to Otterbein for different reasons. Some of these include financial reasons, course selection and sports opportunities. Others said they transferred to Otterbein because it is where they felt they best fit.
“We’ve seen bigger increases in the traditional age transfer students,” Mark Moffitt, the director of adult and transfer admission, said. “In the fall, we saw an increase of 28 students from the prior fall. … This spring we had 16 new (traditional) transfers compared to last year.”
Vice President and Dean of Student Affairs Bob Gatti said that the recent increase is a direct reflection of the reorganization effort that took place last year to create the office for Adult and Transfer Students.
Moffitt said the change with the program began in 2011.
Moffitt and the staff combined both the transfer enrollment services and adult enrollment services together to make the Adult and Transfer office what it is today.
“We used to have a continuing studies office and they worked solely with adult students coming back to Otterbein,” Moffitt said. “We just merged the transfer enrollment and the adult enrollment together.”
Otterbein offers many options for the traditional student who ranges in ages 18-22, adult students who are 23 or older, and the non-degree seeking students who are taking classes for self-fulfillment purposes.
“The majority of our incoming transfer students tend to be on the freshmen level in overall hours,” Moffitt said.
For transfer student Hannah Fowler, a freshman psychology and art double major, transferring to Otterbein from a small school in North Carolina was a way she could have more real-world experiences due to the location of large city nearby. She said it was also an to opportunity to live near her family.
“Being so close to a large city means that there are so many more opportunities when it comes to entertainment, arts, food and resources,” Fowler said.
Fowler first attended Warren Wilson College near the town of Asheville, North Carolina.
Warren Wilson has about 900 traditional students and is a triad school. A triad school is based around three pillars: work, service and academics.
According to Fowler, students were required to work 15 hours on campus, but instead of receiving a paycheck, it went towards their tuition.
“We were on small crews and did practically every job on campus except teach classes,” Fowler said.
Freshman business administration major Kara Barnes transferred from Baldwin Wallace to Otterbein because of athletic opportunities.
“I transferred to Otterbein because I didn’t like the softball program at my previous college,” she said.
Not all transfer students change from one school to another. Some start their college career and decide to devote their time to other areas of life and come back to school later down the road.
“We work with students who have stopped out several years ago, whose life got to them … And now it’s their time to come back and finish their degree,” Moffitt said.
Advice from both Moffitt and Gatti for new transfers is the same: get involved.
“Get out there and seek out the different clubs and organizations that Otterbein has,” Moffitt said. “We encourage (them) to email and make appointments with their academic advisor almost immediately, and we encourage them to come back. We may not always have the answer, but we can get (them) into the right place.”
