Janie Valdés

Janie Valdés is assistant vice president for enrollment management and services at Florida International University (FIU), where she is a long-standing transfer student advocate committed to bridging research and practice. Her work focuses on strengthening transfer enrollment, improving outcomes, and enhancing the student experience end to end.

Serving one of the largest transfer student populations in the nation, Valdés and her team advance transfer-affirming and receptive practices, including FIU’s Connect4Success—a nationally recognized guided transfer pathway—along with proactive course equivalency, prior learning assessment, and student engagement initiatives. This work has significantly increased associate degree transfer-in rates, retention, and completion, and the percentage of transfer students graduating without excess credits. Reflecting on the impact, she notes, “Every transfer student deserves a clear path to success, and making that path a reality is central to everything we do.”