Bridging the Pipeline: Increasing Underrepresented Students’ Preparation for College Through a Summer Bridge Program (original) (raw)
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This quasi-experimental, action-research study explored a five-week pre-enrollment initiative called the Pathways Summer Bridge (PSB) Program in the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University (ASU). Theoretically framed and developed using the six components of Tinto's (1993) longitudinal model of institutional departure, the PSB Program had as its ultimate goal to improve the re-enrollment and retention rates of academically underprepared first-year students who were predominately from first-generation and underrepresented populations. Results indicate that participants' confidence about college expectations and their sense of belonging were higher than a control group of traditional first-year students, and their re-enrollment rates were higher than campus and university averages.
Variability in STEM Summer Bridge Programs: Associations with Belonging and STEM Self-Efficacy
Frontiers in Education
To address the challenges facing racial minority students majoring in STEM during the transition from high school to college, NSF funded Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) programs throughout the country implement summer bridge programs. Bridge programs vary in their focus on professional development, academic support, research experiences, social activities, and in other areas, but all share an intention to support students during their transition to college. Beyond retention, little is known about how these varied summer bridge experiences impact student outcomes in the first year of college. This study first describes the variability in the summer bridge programs in the Alabama LSAMP Alliance and then examines how differences in students’ satisfaction with their experiences are associated with feelings of belonging and STEM self-efficacy, two factors associated with STEM retention. Students (N = 145) who attended an LSAMP summer bridge program were surveyed...
Summer Bridge Programs as an Intervention for College Retention
Our capstone project explored the processes associated with the summer bridge program(SBP) for the Boniface Foundation in St. Louis, Missouri, an organization that funds programs within both the Access Academies and NativityMiguel Catholic school systems in St. Louis. These two organizations operated summer school programs focused on remedial academics for their struggling students and asked us to explore what, if anything, was missing from their current program. Although approximately 94% of students from these schools were successfully admitted to college, Boniface noticed lower college retention and graduation rates for their alumni when compared with national averages for first-generation, low-income students as well compared with the average graduation rates for students from the same sociodemographic backgrounds at St. Louis University (SLU). In conjunction with St. Louis University, Boniface wanted to use summer bridge program interventions to improve college retention for first-generation, low-income, and/or minoritized students from their schools.
Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice, 2020
This longitudinal study evaluated the efficacy of a summer bridge program (SBP) and other support services on college graduation rates at a small liberal arts school in Purchase, NY. Financially disadvantaged students (n = 136) receiving a scholarship and a summer bridge curriculum within the Manhattanville Achievement Program were compared to students who received Pell Grants but did not receive the summer bridge program (n = 1,293) from 2008–2014. Outcomes assessed included graduation at 4 years and 6 years post-enrollment, GPA, and demographic characteristics of those who were more likely to graduate. Results indicated that enrollment in the SBP predicted a greater likelihood to graduate at 4 and 6 years while enrollment in the SBP did not predict higher GPA at either 4 or 6 years post-enrollment. Consistent with national trends, men were less likely to graduate than women. Implications of the findings are discussed.
Summer Start: Supporting Success for Conditionally Admitted Students in a Summer Bridge Program
2017
Summer bridge programs on college campuses vary in terms of focus, activities, and the students they serve. Common goals include enhancing enrollment and diversity, and improving retention rates and timely graduation through better preparation of the admitted class. In 2016, Purdue University piloted “Summer Start,” a credit-bearing, five-week program for conditionally admitted students that includes enhanced support services. These students did not qualify for the traditional fall admission because their profiles included at-risk characteristics (such as low high school GPA or low standardized test score), so they were admitted on the condition that they attended Summer Start. To gauge the impact of Summer Start, we compared the conditionally admitted students to a nearly comparable at-risk group of new beginner students who started in the fall semester. While the first-semester performance of these conditionally admitted students was slightly below that of the near-comparison grou...
This longitudinal study assesses the impact of the University of Arizona’s New Start Summer Program (NSSP) on participants’ first year GPA and retention, controlling for incoming student characteristics. While programmatic participation significantly predicted first-year GPA and retention, this relationship became insignificant when controlling for first-year college experiences and student development. Programmatic efficacy is largely determined not only by how practitioners develop participants’ cognitive abilities, but also how effectively they connect them to social and academic support networks during their first year of college. Within this context, programmatic impact is likely indirect which poses a number of methodological and resource allocation issues for student affairs administrators and professionals. In addition, it highlights the need to assess the impact of summer bridge programs longitudinally while also having a demographically similar group of students who did not participate for comparison: Two areas generally absent from research on summer bridge program literature. Finally, the study was made possible because of a strong collaboration between the NSSP administrators and the research team, where the goals and needs of each group were supported by the other.
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 2010
There are many approaches to solving the problem of underrepresentation of some racial and ethnic groups and women in scientific and technical disciplines. Here, the authors evaluate the association of a summer bridge program with the graduation rate of underrepresented minority (URM) students at a selective technical university. They demonstrate that this 5-week program prior to the fall of the 1st year contains elements reported as vital for successful student retention. Using multivariable survival analysis, they show that for URM students entering as fall-semester freshmen, relative to their nonparticipating peers, participation in this accelerated summer bridge program is associated with higher likelihood of graduation. The longitudinal panel data include more than 2,200 URM students.
Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 2015
This study examines whether community college developmental summer bridge programs (DSBPs) can help students acquire the academic and college knowledge needed to attend and succeed at a four-year higher education institution. In-depth interviews with 14 participants at nine four-year institutions in Texas were conducted two years after their random assignment into one of four four-week long community college DSBPs. The interviews reinforced the value of such programs in affording key validating and socializing experiences as well as illuminate program limitations in managing student expectations and providing institution-specific college knowledge for students who will matriculate at a four-year institution subsequent to program participation.
The Perceptions of At Risk Students Before and After Completing A Pre-College Preparatory Program
This paper presents the results of a study conducted at a HBCU located in rural Maryland that examined perceptions of students participating in a six-week summer bridge program for low income, first generation, and at risk students. The Perceptions, Expectations, Emotions, and Knowledge about College (PEEK) survey was employed and the findings from pre and post testing were compared. LITERATURE REVIEW First-generation students are less likely than their counterparts whose parents have more education to be prepared academically for postsecondary education and when enrolled are less likely to succeed (Warburton, Bugarin, and Nunez, 2001). Further, the research consistently shows lower success rates of first generation college students (Terenzini, Rendon, Upcraft, Millar, Allison, Gregg, and Jalomo, 1996). Additionally Students from families in lower-income brackets are far less likely than those in higher-income brackets to earn a bachelor's degree (Mortenson, 1998; Thayer, 2000). The educational backgrounds of parents and family income level are not the only factors that contribute to the higher education success rates of students. Backgrounds characteristics such as high school academic records, low personal aspirations, and poor study habits have also been identified as contributing (Astin, 1996). To meet the needs of under prepared incoming college students summer bridge programs have been created and primarily, but not exclusively, serve students who have low family incomes and/or have parents that lack a college education. Ami (2001) found that the four-week summer bridge program in mathematics at the University of New Mexico increased the mathematics placement of students and Edwards, Kahn, and Brenton (2001) found that the Math Corps Summer Camp, a 6-week summer mathematics intervention program, resulted in significant mean increases in mathematics ability. Santa and Bacote's (1996) study sought to determine the effects of a summer bridge program on the academic, personal, and social development of minority and low-income students during their first year at Bronx Community College. Results from student tracking showed that 93% of the students who had participated in the summer bridge program persisted into their third semester of college. METHODOLOGY This study was designed to examine the backgrounds, perceptions, expectations, emotions, and knowledge about college of at risk college students participating in the Preparation and Adjustment for College Entrance (PACE) six-week summer program. The study involved the pre and post surveying of students who participated in the program during the summers of 2004 and 2005. A total of 378 surveys were collected and analyzed.
2019
College recently restructured its Summer Bridge Program (SBP) course for incoming lowincome (LI) and first-generation (FG) college students from a non-majors’ biology course, “Issues in Biology,” to an interdisciplinary “Explorations in Science” course. Two significant changes were made with the intention of giving students more agency as scholars: a) lab-based research projects vs. library projects and b) explicitly taught quantitative skills. Both courses used a coherent theme, outside readings and provided opportunities to practice study and exam taking skills. Here we describe the “Explorations” course in detail and compare the outcomes of its first two offerings to those of the original “Issues” class. Both SBP cohorts were compared to students who were neither LI nor FG. We learned that global outcomes such as average retention rate and major selection were not affected by the new format. However, students in “Explorations” mastered more quantitative skills, succeeded in their...