By Sena Pottackal
CCC Journalism Program
BLACKWOOD – Director of Transfer Services Vanessa McMasters’ role has changed. She no longer works directly with students, but she is still responsible for transfer services at Camden County College.
As director of transfer services, McMasters is responsible for all articulation between Camden County College and four-year colleges. She is also responsible for making sure that information is available to staff and students as they prepare to transfer.
McMasters says the biggest difference between her old role as director of transfer services and her new one is that she no longer sees students on a one-to-one basis to help them with transfer advisement. The reason for this is that the responsibility of transfer advisement has been moved into the Advisement Center. Now the Advisement Center provides students with both general and transfer advisement because at a community college they are both components of the same conversation.
Her office is no longer on the first floor of the Student Center across from the Advisement Center. It is now on the second floor of the library, since she is now part of the Division of Academic Support. In the past, she worked on the student services side, she put much effort in helping students navigate the path to a four-year school, but now she works closely with faculty to help them explore the options for transfer and see what the implications are for curriculum change.
“My main function is to support faculty in developing and maintaining curriculum that will transfer,” says McMasters.
Despite these changes in her role at the college, she is still responsible for managing and organizing college fairs and other transfer-related events.
McMasters is 39 years old. She graduated from Bayonne High School in 1989. In 1993, she completed her undergraduate degree in American Studies at Rutgers University at the Douglass Campus in New Brunswick. She obtained her master’s in counseling from West Chester University in Pennsylvania in 1996. Soon after she got a job at Union County College in Elizabeth. McMasters has been working at Camden County College since 1999.
“She started in the Disability Services and became the director of advisement, then she left Advisement to become the director of transfer services. She has certainly let her light shine at Camden County College,” says Anne Marie Hoyle, who worked with McMasters in Disability Services.
Vanessa McMasters, director of transfer services, does paperwork. By Sena Pottackal, CCC Journalism Program