UW–Madison’s Xueli Wang is being honored with a Transfer Champion-Catalyst Award from the National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students (NISTS).
For more than a decade, Wang’s research has centered on community colleges, transfer, and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. She consistently partners with two-year institutions to improve transfer pathways and success, while also examining faculty development and teaching practices that shape students’ experiences and trajectories.
Wang’s research and writings propel the voices of community college transfer students into national conversations, news, and other venues in the public sphere. She is the author of: “On My Own: The Challenge and Promise of Building Equitable STEM Transfer Pathways,” which was released in April 2020. This work sheds critical light on enduring inequities in transfer — particularly in STEM fields — and offers a call to action for transfer practitioners and researchers alike to enact transformative change toward equitable transfer pathways.
The Transfer Champion-Catalyst Award recognizes mid-career professionals who are “game-changers in the transfer field.” The NISTS adds that “awardees demonstrate evidence of leadership, appropriate risk-taking and disrupting the status quo, along with using relevant research and theoretical frameworks to develop programs and services for transfer students.”
“Receiving this honor from the NISTS is especially humbling because it is an organization that primarily serves practitioners, faculty, and administrators on the ground working to improve the experiences of transfer students,” says Wang, the Barbara and Glenn Thompson Professor in Educational Leadership with the School of Education’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis. “So this award not only validates my research, but also speaks to the crucial connection between policy, practice, and research toward collective engagement in critical work that requires deep reflection and change.”
This past fall, Wang also received a major honor from the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) for her groundbreaking work centering equity in research on community colleges and transfer. For these efforts, Wang was presented with the ASHE 2020 Council for the Advancement of Higher Education Programs (CAHEP) Barbara Townsend Lecture Award.
In her nomination, Wang is described as “both the critical friend and staunch advocate for transfer — the epitome of a champion that has had a catalyzing impact on student mobility and transfer.” Through her teaching and research, Wang is also deeply invested in the professional development of many doctoral students, and community college faculty and administrative leaders. She also is dedicated to building key partnerships in the policy community.
“I know this award will forever carry a most special place in my heart as a researcher inspired by community colleges, transfer students, and the champions supporting them,” Wang says. “They all are among the greatest assets to postsecondary education.”
Wang is being publicly recognized during the NISTS 2021 virtual annual conference that is running Feb. 23-25.