Background: To address complex challenges of modern society, engineering education needs to help students develop sociotechnical perspectives of engineering. Research has documented efforts to incorporate sociotechnical thinking into undergraduate engineering education, but those perspectives must often compete with more dominant technocentric…

Ethical counselors promote social justice (American Counseling Association, 2014). Based on counselors' specialty and site of practice, promoting social justice involves different goals and methods. One way for college counselors to promote social justice is to support students from groups historically excluded from higher education at their…

This study investigates the impact of summer bridge programs on the transition, engagement, and retention of Black male students at predominantly White institutions (PWIs). Black males continue to face significant challenges in higher education, including low retention rates and limited feelings of belonging. The purpose of this mixed-methods…

Authors discuss how to utilize culturally engaging campus frameworks, tools, and practices in summer bridge programs to increase access and success for racially minoritized students.

Student retention is a consequential effort of all institutions of higher learning today. The survival of the institution is dependent upon the success of students in obtaining their degrees (Knox, 2005; Noel, 1978). In order to continue to grow a base of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) students and produce quality…

In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the number of students with disabilities seeking postsecondary education. The complexity of needs is also increasing, resulting in more students withdrawing from college or taking leaves of absence in their first year. In 2012, the Student Academic Support Services office (SASS) at McDaniel…

The College Writing/Elon Academy summer partnership at Elon University offers a program model for supporting underrepresented students' transition to college. While the modified section of a required first-year writing course has some limitations, the summer course supports students' development of more complex writing processes and provides…

It is beneficial to any institution of higher education to be able to understand why some students are able to persist to graduation and why some students leave college prematurely. Factors concerning retention and persistence of African American men have been a "hot topic" of discussion in higher education. The purpose of this…

After reviewing results from the Nation's Report Card in Writing, this article presents data from a survey of Latino students, the largest ethnic group of students at Northeastern Illinois University. These data suggest that the Hispanic students at Northeastern are similar to their national Hispanic peers in several ways, such as the levels of…

Describes a comprehensive summer program for freshmen at a large research university. Freshmen enroll in common courses, are housed together, attend workshops on using university resources, and receive the assistance of an upper-division mentor. Evaluation suggests that freshmen who participate in transitional programs are significantly more…

This article describes the University of Pennsylvania's School of Dental Medicine's Program for Advanced Standing Students (PASS) which provides graduates of foreign dental schools with an intensive summer program to prepare them for integration with four-year students for the last two years of didactic and clinical curriculum. A survey of 72 PASS…

Many colleges and universities have designed summer transition programs for students entering their schools. The goal of these programs is to ease the transitional processes students encounter, and to enable the student to feel more acclimated to campus life. Summer transitional programs have been particularly important because they operate at a…

In 1984, 94 college freshmen attended the SEEK Prefreshman Summer Program at Baruch College in the city of New York. This program, held for six weeks during the summer prior to college, provided skills remediation, counseling, and financial aid to freshmen from educationally and economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Its goal was to improve…

The CRitical Issue Bibliography (CRIB) Sheet describes resources related to summer bridge programs. As state and federal policies increase access to higher education, many institutions have experimented with summer bridge programs to aid new populations in the transition from high school to college. This CRIB Sheet provides an overview of bridge…

Evaluated an experimental volunteer summer program designed to increase the success rate of conditionally accepted college students. Collected information about student characteristics and aspirations and follow-up data regarding retention and academic success of student participants. Results indicated increased student understanding of goals and…