The Transfer Center at El Camino College has announced a high ranking in transfer statistics compared to all California community colleges, placing number one in African American California State University (CSU) transfers, number one in transfers to California State University Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) and number two in CSU transfers.

Other student transfer statistics were also revealed in multiple categories during previous academic years, as well as the fall 2020 and spring 2021 semesters.

Rene Lozano, Transfer Center coordinator and counselor, presented this information during the April 19 Board of Trustees (BOT) Zoom meeting, referencing not only the statistics during the pandemic, but also the performance they typically would have with students during a regular academic year.

“I chose 2018 to 2019 to highlight our transfer statistics and how we serve students because as you know, [2019 – 2020] was an odd year,” Lozano said during the Zoom meeting. “This is a more indicative year of what we typically do, year after year.”

Although the 2019 to 2020 year was impacted by COVID-19, findings about ECC’s transfer statistics with CSU, private schools and Universities of California (UC) saw a higher ranking compared to all California community colleges in overall transfers to CSU’s, the University of California Berkley (UCB) and Latinx transfers to CSU’s and UC’s.

There was also comparison in the presentation on the statistics of student attendance numbers of transfer events and workshops during the fall 2020 semester when compared to the 2018 to 2019 academic year.

According to the presentation, fall 2020 had 1,698 students attend 49 virtual workshops and 718 students attending the Fall Virtual University Fair, compared to 2500 students that attended 56 in-person workshops and an estimated 400 students that attended the two University Fairs during the 2018 to 2019 year.

“The theory that they will not come if it’s virtual, we absolutely blew that out of the water, there’s our proof,” Lozano said during the Zoom meeting.

But although there was success in the fall, Lozano said that the engagement hasn’t been as high during the spring 2021 semester.

“[It’s] probably zoom fatigue for students,” Lozano said during the Zoom meeting. “As you know, with enrollment numbers and what have you, perhaps that’s one of the reasons why it was lower-attended.”

The Transfer Center has also seen record numbers in Honors Transfer Program (HTP), revealing that 246 students have completed the program and that 138 students are certified for the Transfer Alliance Program (TAP) to UCLA.

“Joe Holliday, our former Director of HTP, says one of the reasons why we are such a successful HTP program is because we, the Transfer Center, provide the backbone of the counseling piece to that,” Lozano said during the Zoom meeting.

For trustee Katherine Steinbroner Maschler, seeing the amount of support and success that the program is having made her reflect on her time at El Camino.

“Having been a graduate of El Camino and a transfer student to Dominguez Hills many, many years ago back in [1976], I wish we had had such [an] amazing program available to us back then,” trustee Maschler said during the Zoom meeting.

Lozano said that the Transfer Center will continue to provide services online to help students, such as transfer counselor and advisor appointments, university representative appointments and drop-in appointments, and online tools for help on transfer applications.

“A lot of the colleges in our region decided not to host a lot of these things because they felt that it was going to be too cumbersome, or maybe students wouldn’t attend,” Lozano said during the Zoom meeting. “I and my team absolutely were adamant about providing as much as we could virtually for our students, to not cheat our students of anything at all as it relates to transfer.”

Trustee Kenneth Brown, said the Transfer Center is doing well, and shared some ideas on how to continue to help students online and give them more resources.

“We stumbled on a really good way of doing things. I mean, we can invite a lot more campus representatives from all across the country to come to our campus, get a virtual tour and interact and engage with our students one to one,” trustee Brown said during the Zoom meeting.