Transferring Made Easy

Transfer students like Evelyn Lucado '26 start at Washington after their classmates, but that doesn't set them behind.

Evelyn Lucado ’26 came to Washington College after most of the students in her graduating class. Armed with a freshly earned associate degree in creative writing and English literature from Carroll Community College, she arrived on campus in the fall of 2024 and has since taken advantage of every opportunity that has come her way.  Lucado is on track to graduate with an English major, minors in creative writing and journalism, editing, and publishing, and a résumé showing she has worked across the breadth of writing opportunities at Washington. 

While her path toward writing and literature was winding, once she started on it, she’s never wavered. 

“I knew that I always loved writing, and I loved English and literature, but I got talked out of trying to pursue it as a career for a while,” Lucado said. Instead, she worked toward a career in health care, which she thought would be more stable.

Lucado left high school with a goal of studying nursing, graduating as a certified nursing assistant and geriatric nursing assistant because she liked helping people. While still in high school she worked at an assisted living center with memory care and hospice patients and continued with the work while earning her associate degree. Her original plan was transfer to Towson University’s nursing program to continue her studies in the field. 

“About halfway through my first year of college, I had the hard realization that I didn’t want to go into health care,” Lucado said. 

In talking with her professors at the community college, Lucado was encouraged to pursue her passions. That’s when she focused on writing and English literature—things she was always interested in but wasn’t sure where those passions would take her professionally. 

Lucado discovered Washington while at college fair hosted by Carroll Community College. It was there she met Cassandra Hynson, associate director of admissions, who encouraged her to apply. Hynson visits every Maryland community college twice a year for transfer fair events. 

Hynson guided Lucado through the application process, including working with her to make the cost of attendance work for her and her family. She encourages anyone interested in transferring to Washington to reach out to her get to know the process and so she can be familiar with their journey and interests. 

“In talking with Ms. Hynson, she made it clear that Washington wants students to be here regardless of financial things and is willing to make it work the best they can,” Lucado said. “I was able to get some good scholarships to make it work out. It was really more just realizing it’s not so daunting as the sticker price seems and there are ways to make it a lot more realistic.” 

Hynson works hands-on with our transfer students, providing them with application checklists, merit scholarship information, and details about the transfer credit evaluation process. 

Washington has a “direct transfer” agreement with Maryland community colleges and some others so that students with completed associate degrees have almost all their general education requirements met. 

“Our data shows that students who come to us with an A.A/A.S. from a Maryland community college have graduated 100% of the time,” Washington College Registrar Kelly Rowett-James said.

While Lucado had a laundry list of things that attracted her to Washington, the writing opportunities across all fields and the Rose O’Neill Literary House were big draws. Additionally, the success rate for alumni going straight into careers or higher education after graduating as well as the plentiful internship opportunities and the option to study abroad certainly helped. But in the end, what resonated with her was the people. 

“I was really drawn in by how friendly and welcoming everyone was,” Lucado said of her time at a Sophie Kerr Saturday she attended before enrolling. “I was really worried about transferring in and then not being able to find where I should be here.”

Once Lucado enrolled, she jumped right into her English major. 

One of the first courses she took—as does every English major in the fall of their junior year—was the junior seminar, a course that gets students familiar with and thinking about their Senior Capstone Experience (SCE), a year-long research project. 

“I came here with the assumption that I was already behind somehow. I had it in my head that I had to catch up to everyone else around me and had to do everything at once,” Lucado said. Her fears proved untrue, she learned, when she voiced her concerns to her junior seminar professor who explained that a lot of students change their ideas for their SCE and don’t come in with a plan. 

“Even though I hadn’t been thinking about the process for two years, I wasn’t behind,” Lucado said. 

Like many, the project Lucado worked on during the junior seminar did not become the project she would pursue for her SCE. Instead, she’s working on a project that examines the Bible and the Book of Mormon through a historic lens, looking at them as literature, rather than religious and cultural texts, and relating them to “Angels in America.” 

Over the summer between her junior and senior years, Lucado pursued an independent study with English professor Courtney Rydel. During that time, she had not only gotten ahead on a set of credits to lighten her load for the semester, she also got a jumpstart on her research and reading for her SCE. 

In her time on campus, Lucado has taken full advantage to pursue and improve her writing. She started working on The Elm, the student newspaper, her first semester, and is now the editor-in-chief. She also screens poetry submissions for the College’s national literary journal, Cherry Tree; is a peer consultant at the Writing Center, helping other students with their writing projects; and participated in the newly relaunched Kiplin Hall short-term study abroad program. 

Though she’s still not sure what kind of writing career she’d like to pursue after graduating this coming spring, Lucado has been making strides to follow her passions and see what sticks. 

“I feel like I’ve been set up pretty well to go in different directions,” Lucado said of writing careers. “I would like to do something that helps people with writing somehow. I’m not really sure what that looks like yet, if it’s more public service journalism or going into education.” 

Whatever she chooses, Lucado is no longer concerned about pursuing English and writing leading to a stable career. 

“I had a conversation with English professor Amber Taliancich about looking at careers in literature, writing, and publishing, and something she told me that’s kind of stuck with me is that people who want those careers find them. There are those jobs out there, and it is possible to make a living of art and being creative, whether that’s through art itself or through things going on in the background,” Lucado said. 

“I had no idea how I was going to make a career out of all of this, but I’m really glad I pushed through that uncertainty and decided to pursue it instead of just giving up and trying to find a ‘stable’ career,” Lucado said. “Having the hands-on experience I have and realizing how many different avenues there are to be involved in the writing world makes it feels a lot more possible now.”

— MacKenzie Brady '21