UH Manoa senior earns scholarship from national organization that supports transfer students

Reimi Patterson, UH Manoa senior majoring in history and religion, received the top scholarship award of $1,500 for the 2005-2006 academic year from Tau Sigma National Honor Society for Transfer Students. She was selected for the award for her outstanding contributions as the first president of UHM‘s Tau Sigma chapter.

Tau Sigma‘s goal is to formally recognize successful transitions that transfer students have made and to encourage them to assist and support future transfer students through direct service and programming.

Patterson — who transferred to UHM from Honolulu Community College — was singled out for her assistance in creating an organizational structure that established the Manoa chapter. She also was involved in UHM‘s orientation programs for transfer students as a presenter and group facilitator in 2004 and currently works as a customer service associate for New Student Programs.

Last summer, Patterson and two other students finished compiling, illustrating, and editing a "Transfer Student Resource Guide," the first of its kind at UHM. The guide offers a list of off-campus services that new-to-Hawaiʻi students are likely to need in their first weeks and months at the new campus. The Associated Students of the University of Hawaiʻi (ASUH) funded the printing of the booklet, and it is now distributed to all incoming transfer students at school orientation sessions.

Patterson was also part of a team that developed the curriculum for a transfer student peer mentor training program. Three students have completed the training and will be serving as peer mentors for transfer students at UHM‘s First Year Advising Center later this semester as students are planning courses for the fall 2006 semester. The mentoring project and the resource guide were both created in response to needs transfer students expressed in surveys collected at orientation programs from summer 2004 onward.

The senior has maintained the high academic standards required to become a member of Tau Sigma — a 3.5 grade point ratio or better with a full course load at the end of the first semester at the new campus.

Tau Sigma advisers are Christine Kirk-Kuwaye, coordinator of New Student Orientation, and Megumi Taniguchi, coordinator of the First Year Advising Center.