The NIU Transfer Center for students is located at Williston Hall.

The center, located in Room 301, is for students interested in transferring to NIU.

Before the center was created, there was no specific place on campus for transfer students to get information.

“What we really needed was one central office where students could come,” said Missy Gillis, Transfer Center coordinator. “What ended up happening was that there were different places on campus with all this information, but there wasn’t really a student-focused center.”

The Transfer Center has an articulation handbook that shows community college classes that are equivalent to classes at NIU, Gillis said.

For instance, if a student wanted to take a calculus course at a community college over the summer, the transfer center’s handbook lists the equivalent class so the student can earn credit.

There also is an online system for students.

“We’re going to be working a lot with a new system called the Course Applicability System (CAS),” Gillis said. “It allows a student to go online at www.transfer.org, and it gives you the Degree Audit Report System (DARS).”

Gillis said the site also reports which classes a student has taken at a community college, and how those credits transfer to NIU.

The center works with community colleges to create a dual admissions program.

“For instance, if you were a student who was going to start at one of the community colleges, you would apply to NIU at the same time as applying to the other college,” she said. “Instead of going to one of the colleges, and hoping you are doing the right thing, now you are dually admitted to NIU, and every semester you receive a DARS report.”

Transfer Center secretary Kay Billings has worked in both the previous center and the new one.

“We have a nicer environment than the small offices of the previous center,” Billings said. “We are trying to promote more student contact, where before, it was mostly just dealing with the community colleges. I am confident great things will happen.”