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Strategic Transfer Engagement Plan (STEP)

The Strategic Transfer Engagement Plan (STEP) is a comprehensive plan to identify CT State students’ transfer intentions, determine where they would like to transfer, when they would like to transfer by, and identify the academic area that they are interested in.

For questions about STEP, please contact us at step@ct.edu

About the Plan

Collaborative Effort

This collaborative effort between CT State Community College and the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (CSCU) prioritizes transfer by using data and best practices in developing equitable solutions to maximize student transfer and transfer student success within the CSCU system. The aim is to increase vertical transfer from our 2-year to 4-year institutions with less barriers, improve credit transferability, and provide more guidance and support than ever before.

Participating Institutions


2 Year 

CT State Community College (all campus locations)

4 Year 

  • Central Connecticut State University 
  • Charter Oak State College
  • Eastern Connecticut State University 
  • Southern Connecticut State University 
  • Western Connecticut State University

View Locations

Impact

Students

STEP creates opportunities for connection, so students can engage with representatives from their selected 4-year institution earlier in their academic career to increase access to the resources and campus at their primary transfer destination to increase the likelihood of enrolling in and completing a bachelor’s degree program. Additionally, through STEP the administrative work of having to resubmit documents that the student has already submitted to CT State is removed by seamlessly migrating transcripts and immunization records to the primary transfer destination that the student indicates on their STEP Transfer Intent Form. Removing barriers for students is critical for transfer student persistence and the STEP program is designed to identify and remove roadblocks that could prevent a student from continuing to a 4-year institution in pursuit of obtaining their bachelor’s degree.  

Faculty and Staff

Connecticut’s community college students are more likely to come from minoritized and marginalized communities than students at our state universities. Like their peers at the state universities, they are overwhelmingly seeking bachelor’s degrees – yet most of them never transfer to a four-year school. STEP removes barriers and streamlines the process for students with the aim to increase baccalaureate attainment for CT State Community College students within the CSCU system. 

Students with 61+ credits accepted by CSUs who graduate within three years have three times the success rate of students with 15 or fewer credits. Increasing the number of transfer students in our own system will make a significant difference in the number of students earning life-changing degrees from CSCU four-year institutions.

Community

"If we increase the number of students who transfer to a CSCU four-year institution by just 1%, more than 100 additional students would graduate with a bachelor’s degree from our system every year. Research shows that the returns to investing in higher education are substantial. The economic return to the average CSCU graduate with a bachelor’s degree exceeds $1 million over a 40-year career, but few consider the non-economic benefits such as more thoughtful citizens, better public schools, and healthier individuals and communities. Public economic benefits include higher tax revenues, increased worker productivity, and lower public expenditures for health, social service, law enforcement and correctional spending. Ninety-six percent of CSCU students are from Connecticut. Increased baccalaureate attainment rates are a benefit to the students that we serve and the communities of Connecticut where our CSCU graduates live and work."

- CSCU Chancellor Terrence Cheng

Implementation

STEP is a transfer program that was first envisioned by the CSCU Transfer Council in 2023. It was determined that a program administrator would need to be put in place to oversee this critical work before STEP could move forward and that the role would need to be in the CSCU System Office. In Spring 2024, a STEP coordinator was hired in the role of Assistant Director: CSCU Office of Transfer and Articulation. The STEP program provides a collaborative approach in simplifying the transfer process, increasing options for automatic acceptance within the CSCU system, ensuring general education courses transfer as general education courses, and eliminating loss of credits. The overarching CSCU strategic goal is to increase CT State transfer student baccalaureate completion rates within the CSCU system by 7% by May of 2030. 

The five key components of STEP focus on the STEP Transfer Intent Form, CSCU Transfer Information Guide, CSCU 4-year Engagement, a streamlined transfer application process, and collecting transfer data. 

Staff/Faculty tools