Benefits of summer bridge and early arrival experiences include the academic and social integration of incoming first-year students into their chosen institutions. The unprecedented nature of the COVID-19 pandemic created opportunities to re-imagine delivery of activities and engagement of incoming first-year students in summer bridge and early…

Summer bridge programs often aim to build social connections for first-year students to ease their transition into college, yet few studies have reported on bridge programs successfully leading to these outcomes. We backward designed a summer bridge program for incoming biology majors to increase the comfort and connections among students and…

Retention of students to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) major has been studied for four cohorts participating in a summer bridge program supported by the National Science Foundation. Students participated in a 6-week program prior to their first term of enrollment at a research-intensive land grant university. Comparisons…

We conducted a research case study to ascertain the effect of a bridge program on fostering self-growth and academic readiness for college. Academic wholism provided the vehicle to promote self-awareness, self-motivation, and academic maturity. The rippling effect of this program extended beyond academics to the personal level. (Contains 2…