This is the Spartan Transfer Hub brought to you by Impact 89 FM and MSU Transfer Student Success Here's what we've got for you today. Hi everybody. Welcome to today's episode of the Spartan Transfer Hub, the podcast about all things related to MSU transfer students brought to you by the MSU Transfer Student Success Center, also known as TSSC. I will be your primary host today, Zuhaer. I'm an international student from Bangladesh, and I am a rising senior.
Zuhaer:And currently, I'm studying in mechanical engineering with a concentration in computer design.
Lauren:Hi, everyone. My name is Lauren. I use she/ her pronouns. I am going into my second year as a master's student in the student affairs administration program. I recently graduated from Florida State University in 2024 with my bachelor's degree, and now I am a MSU Spartan on my way to get my master's degree in the spring.
Lauren:On this episode, we are joined by the program coordinator and one of our MSU Tempo mentors. We are also joined by Ashley Hewlett Lemke and Dr. Charles Jackson, who both work for the Transfer Student Success Center. Would you all be able to introduce yourselves?
Frank:Hi, everyone. My name is Frank Dachille, I use he/him pronouns. I just finished my third year at MSU as a graduate student in the Physics Education Research Group. I was a transfer student myself, I came from three different community colleges back in California, and I am the program coordinator for Tempo.
Amber:Hi, everybody. My name is Amber Hazel, and my pronouns are she/her. This is, like, my two and a half years. My third semester here at MSU, my major is geography with a concentration in atmosphere and climate out of the college of social science. I transferred here from Mott Community College, which is where I live by, which is Flint, Michigan.
Amber:And I am a mentor in TEMPO.
Ashley:Hi, everybody. My name is Ashley Hewlett Lemke. I use the she series of pronouns. I actually graduated from Michigan State in 2007. I was an interdisciplinary humanities, major, which is in the College of Arts and Letters.
Ashley:I too was a transfer student. I actually transferred from Washtenaw Community College, which is in the Ann Arbor Ypsilanti area, for those who are familiar with the state of Michigan. And if you saw me holding up my hand right now, I would be pointing to the lower part of Michigan on the thumb side because I am from a place called Tecumseh, Michigan. I am the program coordinator with the Transfer Student Success Center.
Dr. Jackson:Hello, everyone. My name is doctor Charles Jackson. I am the director of the Transfer Student Success Center at Michigan State University. I was also a transfer student to MSU. I also use the he/him/his pronouns.
Dr. Jackson:The institutions that I transferred from were Tennessee State University, an HBCU and also Lansing Community College, which is right down the Road from Michigan State University. I'm originally from Detroit and been in my role for about three years now.
Zuhaer:Before we get into the main topic of discussion today, I am excited to ask you guys. So you know how MSU is very famous for our dairy store, which is excellent in every single right. The flavors are immaculate, and they're just so good. Anytime somebody's taking a tour on campus, they're all going to the dairy store. Right?
Zuhaer:So I have a question for you guys. If there was a flavor dedicated to you, what would you call it? And what would it be like in terms of flavor and taste, would you say?
Frank:I would go with the Spartan Squirrel Swirl. This would be a latte plus peanut butter plus chocolate swirled into an ice cream to appropriately represent all of the amazing squirrels on campus.
Lauren:That's incredible.
Amber:So I am actually a commuter student. So the flavor I kinda came up with was the early morning commuter, a espresso based ice cream with chocolate covered espresso pieces in it to kinda give you that jump you need to drive, especially if you're driving on the 69 Corridor.
Zuhaer:Wow. Yeah. That's that's really smart, I would say.
Lauren:Yours are so much more interesting than mine. Mine, I would call it the reverse Keon Coleman. Keon Coleman was a football player for MSU who transferred to Florida State University, which is my undergrad institution. And I went from FSU to MSU and it would be an orange creamsicle.
Lauren:You get the tropical of Florida with, like, a vanilla kind of creamsicle representing snow and, like the frozen winter land that the MSU is.
Ashley:Okay. Now I wanna go to the dairy store. So I would actually call mine MSU mashup because what comes to mind is actually a mashup of a couple of my favorite flavors. So one, their cookie dough ice cream is amazing. For a while, I think it was when the Lions were in the playoff last year, they had it was like a blue it was like Cookie Monster cookie dough.
Ashley:So it was like the blue what do you call it? Like, Blue Moon and it had chocolate chip, like, cookie pieces in it. And then there there used to be another flavor. So that's the thing, like, the dairy store flavors are they're on different cycles. So, you know, you gotta go back because there might be new new flavors next time you're there.
Ashley:So the other flavor was I actually used to have it was like a salted caramel. I can't remember what it was called. But it's like a salted caramel ice cream that had these little chocolate pieces in it that were shaped like turtles and they were filled with caramel. So I'm thinking like a mashup of like those two flavors together. And I wanna just give us a plug in advance.
Ashley:Y'all are learning about the dairy store. So just keep in mind that the Transfer Student Success Center actually will have a dairy store flavor during National Transfer Student Week, which is the third week of October. So please stay tuned so you can learn how to get your free scoop, on on behalf of the Transfer Student Success Center.
Dr. Jackson:Man, I cannot wait for National Transfer Student Week so I can get that ice cream flavor. My ice cream flavor would be the tropical chocolate coconut, which would include, of course, coconut flavor ice cream, as well as dark chocolate Hershey Kisses. I'm a big fan of, like, Hershey Kisses and, dark chocolate and coconut. So that would be my flavor.
Zuhaer:That sounds like a go to hit at the dairy store, honestly.
Dr. Jackson:Yes, sir.
Lauren:Zuhaer, you're not getting out of this. What what is your ice cream flavor?
Zuhaer:Okay. So I think I'm gonna call mine the cake Cunningham because Okay. Because I'm a big NBA fan. I watched Cade Cunningham live when the Pistons played the Suns at the Breslin Center at MSU. And the flavor would be cake batter for ice cream, but it wouldn't be just normal cake.
Zuhaer:It would be chocolate fudge cake, and I would put some peanut butter in there because it goes well, I feel. And I would put fudge in there, and I would put bananas in there because I love bananas, even though it has nothing to do with Cade Cunningham. But that would be me.
Dr. Jackson:We need to We need
Amber:to round it out.
Dr. Jackson:We need to actually give this to the Detroit Pistons. We're thinking about this ice cream flavor. Yes.
Zuhaer:I agree with you. Sponsor. So jumping into what the students are really here for, we talked in our first episode a little bit about TEMPO and what it is, but would anybody here today be willing to give us a little bit of a refresher as to what TEMPO is, what it stands for?
Frank:Yeah, so TEMPO stands for the Transfer Experience Mentoring Program Opportunity, and it's a wonderful group of transfer students that get together weekly as part of the weekly gathering space that we offer through TEMPO. As a mentee in TEMPO, you're also paired with a mentor to kind of support you through that transition as you move to MSU.
Zuhaer:So the main focus of Tempo, I'm understanding, is the mentorship aspect. Right? What can mentees expect when they join Tempo?
Amber:So I can take that. Mentees can expect to join a excellent community of transfer students because as most of us know, as transfer students, it's little bit harder to integrate into the university experience. So having a community of people who have also been through a very similar experience can be very welcoming and a little bit easier to transfer into the university experience. Just for through weekly gathering spaces, where all of us kinda come together in an informal kind of community. We have food and play games, and it's just very chill, and it's building that community together.
Amber:Also, between the one on one mentorship programs that Tempo also offers, so that helps you on a one on one basis to help find resources and integrate more into the university experience.
Frank:Yeah, totally. And I would also just add on to that, in that it's really useful in finding places to eat on campus, knowing where to study, knowing the right times how to find a study group in courses. Just those things that you really want to involve yourself as a student at MSU.
Amber:It's the little things. Like that wouldn't be maybe covered in, say if you're reading about MSU in general and where things are and where your classes are, it's it's the little niche things on, like, where's a good parking spot? You know? Where what's the best time to find a parking spot? Because that's also really crucial.
Amber:Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it's the little things like that to help integrate a little bit better.
Zuhaer:Yeah. I I respect that a lot because, as you said, those little things are the things that we don't find as readily in terms of when we are looking for resources. Like, if I'm looking for specific answers, a lot of times I can't find that on the Internet or if I'm just going to a random page on Google or something like that. So I think that the mentorship meetings, like you said, are really informative in that way. And I think, like, the the upcoming transfer students can really take note of resources like that that they can use.
Lauren:If a returning transfer student wants to get involved, what does getting involved with Tempo look like, and what can they expect to gain from the experience?
Frank:Yeah, so I think getting involved in Tempo as like a returning transfer student really looks like getting involved in the community. So we have these weekly gathering spaces where we invite all Tempo mentors, mentees, but also allies of the transfer student community. So really anyone who's a transfer student or interested in joining just a group of transfer students to hang out, learn about resources, meet and connect with each other. The weekly gathering space is amazing for that. We also have the Transfer Student Success Center, and we have a lot of Tempo folks go to the weekly gathering spaces, and then go right to the community dinner.
Frank:You're also welcome to just show up to the community dinner, because those are amazing places for transfer students to again meet and connect with each other and really form that community.
Lauren:As someone who hosts and plans those community dinners, that means a lot. So thank you very much, Frank. And just for our listeners who might not know what our community dinners are, every month, the Transfer Student Success Center hosts a community dinner in different spots on campus. Sometimes we use the multicultural center. Other times we use the STEM buildings or other offices.
Lauren:And it is just a place where we get to feed our transfer students, like a good hearty meal. We are trying to source locally from local businesses, Michigan owned businesses, and really just create a space where students can come together. We have a speaker of the month who comes in and tells our students about all the resources that they have. We have games and community building opportunities, but really it is just a space to to live in community and get your needs met and eat a meal and be somewhere warm at least once a month with people that hopefully you can grow to trust and love.
Zuhaer:So as our listeners can already tell, TEMPO seems to be a really great and exciting place for building community with other transfer students. Right? I want to know a little bit more about what are some opportunities to meet transfer students beyond just the mentorship meetings.
Amber:Yeah. So as Frank pointed out, our weekly gathering space is the big one to meet other transfer students. It's also helpful because you meet people from so many different walks of life, from different majors, different programs here at MSU, or even like, I'm myself, I'm a nontraditional student. So I'm in a completely different walk of life than they say the average university student. So you get a lot of different perspectives just from this one space with all these different people in it.
Amber:And it really opens up a lot of ways to build connections and to make friends who you probably wouldn't normally you know, talk to if they're not, like, in your major or in your kind of group of, you know, even in your dorm or, you know, your usual social group. It kind of opens the horizon a little bit so you can meet new people.
Lauren:it's it's a bit different for undergraduate and graduate students because I'm in a very cohort based model. So I met all of my friends in my classes with Zuhar. You had a very different experience and it seems like Tempo is kind of providing that space for students who don't see the same 15 people in every single class and they're in a major with, you know, 300 other people or more. We were talking about just being able to find your people not in those spaces, not in those classrooms. And Tempo is a very great way for students to find their community outside of the classroom
Amber:Absolutely. I would totally agree with that. Just because too, like, with my transfer experience, I did take a lot of lower level courses. So I was dumped into, like, a 300 person class. And that can be really overwhelming to, like, wanna talk to somebody or, like, find someone to talk to or to have community with or make friends. So this is, a smaller, lower stakes way to do that.
Zuhaer:I would agree a lot with whatever you guys are saying, and I want to emphasize a little bit that as an international student, not particularly a transfer student, a lot of times it wasn't the easiest for me to make friends or relationships outside of classes. And what I did that helped me a lot was just to branch out as much as I found it difficult to do or found it uncomfortable to do. I tried my best. Like, for example, the very first group of friends I made at MSU was simply because one day I randomly saw a group of students in the hallway as I was going outside to throw the trash, and they all looked really nice and stuff. And all of a sudden, with my trash in hand, I'm going to throw out the trash.
Zuhaer:I stopped for a second, and I'm like, should I tell them that? And for a quick second, I was like, sure. Why why not? Why wouldn't I? Right?
Zuhaer:And so I told them, like, y'all look great. Those shoes are really nice. All of that stuff. Just a quick compliment, and I was locked in. Like, with with them, after that day, we hung out every single day until the end of the semester.
Zuhaer:So I I feel like, you know, every single time it seems a little bit daunting to, you know, like reach out or take that step when nobody else is taking that step to make a relationship. I feel it's very important. And with TEMPO and the resources and the ways of meeting people that TEMPO presents to transfer students, I think it can be really useful for our students to take notes from all of these kinds of experiences that we have had before. And hopefully, they will be able to have a better time than all of us did, I guess, at the first times of our building of relationships.
Lauren:Life advice with Zuhaer . So I have a question for our Tempo mentor in the room with us. And and Frank, you are welcome to answer this one as well. But what has been your favorite moment as a mentor or your favorite moment just being involved with Tempo?
Amber:I would have to say seeing the community grow as it has. Because I was a mentee in the spring semester of twenty four, and it wasn't as big. It was a little bit smaller, a little bit more not quite as stretched out, but watching it grow just for the last couple semesters has been incredibly rewarding to see. Like, as as a transfer student and having that community and seeing the community build, it's like, this is the best. This is what we want because we want people to feel welcome in the university.
Amber:Because it like, as I said before, it's so overwhelming when you get here. But to have that, like, safe space of people who are in a similar walk or know what you're going through and seeing it grow is just it's very rewarding.
Frank:That is exactly what I'm gonna say for your question. Yeah. The the program started in fall twenty twenty three, and I I wanna say it was a slow start, but it really wasn't. We just, you know, kicked off, and there was a super strong group of core mentors, and that really, you know, kept the program moving for the last two years. And as you said, it really grew and developed, and we have such a strong community, and really close relationships with a bunch of mentors, mentees throughout the program.
Lauren:The people listening to it can't see it, but the smiles on both their faces talking about this program is it's just it's so sweet and, like, I can see how much it means to you all. And I can't, like, I can't express anything except words. So audience, just trust me when I tell you.
Zuhaer:If you wanna take a little bit of a personal route for this upcoming question I have for you guys, how would you say that your personal experiences at MSU have shaped the way that you show up as a mentor? Do you think it has any significant effect that made you a better mentor in terms of your mission towards these transfer students?
Amber:I mean, I can go. I can start us off. So as I alluded to earlier, I am a nontraditional student. I am an older student. I am in my thirties.
Amber:So coming back as an older student was a little scary, to put it kind of mildly. So I feel that kind of having to be a full grown adult, as somebody has put it for me, I've kinda had to navigate things more independently. And kind of coming into MSU and finding tempo is like, oh, I don't have to do that alone. So having that experience and bringing that in, that's what I've told my mentees. Like, you're not alone in this.
Amber:We're all here for you. I promise. And I promise there's no timeline in when you get done. There's no fin like, there's there's the finish line, but you get there when you get there, and it's okay. And but we're here to support you on that way.
Amber:Like, as I, I give this analogy to Frank. We're like, if you're if you've ever gone bowling with, like, bumpers, you're throwing the ball. We're the bumpers kinda guiding you to the pins. We're here for you. And if that ball rolls at one mile an hour down the lane, that's fine.
Amber:We're here till you get to the end.
Zuhaer:That's a great analogy, Amber. Thank you so much for sharing about your experience as a nontraditional student as well. I feel like a lot of transfer students can feel a little bit more comfortable knowing that there are so many people who are like you in these kinds of situations that don't have to feel like they're alone in handling all of this. And I'm sure that Tempo has created that kind of an atmosphere that, like you said, has supported them and will support them in these
Zuhaer:journeys. So I wanted to ask a little bit about what you guys would have to say to a student who wants to be paired with a tempo mentor, but might be a little bit nervous about applying.
Amber:Well, it's it kind of brings back to what you said about when you were taking the trash out.
Amber:It's just that one second of, like, blind courage to just jump and do it. Not to be the analogy machine, but my my mom has a really great one about stuff like this, about if you're nervous or hesitant. It's she calls eating the frog. So like so like you have the frog, you have to eat the frog, and it's gonna be uncomfortable. But just put it in your mouth, get it down, eat the frog, and you'll feel so much better afterwards.
Amber:So it's just it's that one minute of just if you're uncomfortable, that's when change happens. So just that little minute of being uncomfortable of, like, oh, I don't know if I should do this. Just have that courage to be like, you know what? I'm gonna do this, and this is gonna help me grow as a person because comfortability is where we we don't grow. Being uncomfortable is where we grow as people.
Lauren:And I think I think, Frank, you said something earlier about, like, the weekly gatherings are a space for even students who might have applied but didn't necessarily get matched up with a mentor because we do have limited, you know, people who are mentors. But we wanna so even if like a student applies and maybe they don't get matched up with a mentor in their first semester, there are other opportunities to engage with it. And so they're really like, there isn't anything to be nervous about. Right?
Frank:Yeah. Yeah. Like as Lauren said, not all applicants who apply to tempo will receive a spot. But you all are still highly encouraged to join the larger transfer student community through these community dinners that the Transfer Student Success Center hosts, and all of the wide range of events that they also host. So there's plenty of ways to get involved and connected on campus as a transfer student, even without the direct pairing.
Zuhaer:I wanna come back to how great of an analogy that frog thing is. I feel like at every difficult point in my life, I will be thinking about a frog, and I will be thinking about your mom for a little bit.
Amber:Oh, it's just every time I'll be like, I don't wanna do this. She's just like, eat the frog. Don't let the frog sit in your mouth. The frog's kicking you in the face. I'm just like, okay.
Amber:Alright. I got it. Thank you. I think it was out of a book or something. I'm not exactly sure where she got that from.
Zuhaer:Yeah.
Amber:But I have been hearing it my whole life.
Lauren:See, eating a frog is like my worst nightmare. I'm actually terrified of frogs.
Amber:Oh, really?
Zuhaer:That's why it's so useful as an analogy. Right? I think I need to make a decal out of all of this and like publish it and get it on my car and everything.
Frank:Just wait until you eat the frog, go bowling, and take the trash out.
Frank:That's gonna be
Amber:You'll be set
Lauren:First three things you have to do in college
Zuhaer:Thank you for sharing those stories. Finally, if a student is interested in being a Tempo mentee or getting involved in the greater transfer student community, how can they apply?
Frank:Yeah. So we have a Tempo mentee application on the D2L page, and it's you can also find this application on the link tree on Instagram. It's tagged MSU Transfer Success. And this link tree is where you'll find a bunch of TSSC events, resources for transfer students, and that mentee application for Tempo. But just to recap, that information is also on your D2L experience.
Zuhaer:Wrapping it up today, I would like for Frank and Amber to take the opportunity to share some final thoughts, final messages, or any advice you would have for our upcoming transfer students, please.
Frank:Yeah, so if you are a transfer student that's going to come to MSU this fall, just know that you're not alone. That's really the main thing. We're here to support you through that. We have resources. We have groups.
Frank:We have community for you to join. And that's that's really it. We just you won't be alone once you join MSU. We're here to help you.
Amber:Yeah. And it's like, I know a lot of people are like, well, I don't wanna ask for it. No. It's okay. That's what we're here for.
Amber:We want to help you. We want to help you integrate into the university experience. It's not a sign of weakness to come in and be like, hey. I just need a little bit of help. That's totally fine.
Amber:That's what we're here for, and we want to help make this process a little bit easier.
Zuhaer:Thank you so much to our guests, Frank and Amber, for joining us today. Thank you, Dr. Jackson and Ashley for sitting in with us and my cohost Lauren. And most importantly, thank you all for listening today to our episode. With that, we're going to wrap up this episode of the Spartan Transfer Hub.
Zuhaer:Please join us next week with another great episode. Find us at the Impact 89 FM website as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, whatever platforms you have available to you. And remember to always eat the frog. Go green. Go White.
Zuhaer:Thanks for stopping by the Spartan Transfer Hub brought to you by Impact89FM and MSU's Transfer Student Success Center. See you soon!