Building Better Bridges into STEM: A Synthesis of 25 Years of Literature on STEM Summer Bridge Programs

Abstract

Summer bridge programs are designed to help transition students into the college learning environment. Increasingly, bridge programs are being developed in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines because of the rigorous content and lower student persistence in college STEM compared with other disciplines. However, to our knowledge, a comprehensive review of STEM summer bridge programs does not exist. To provide a resource for bridge program developers, we conducted a systematic review of the literature on STEM summer bridge programs. We identified 46 published reports on 30 unique STEM bridge programs that have been published over the past 25 years. In this review, we report the goals of each bridge program and whether the program was successful in meeting these goals. We identify 14 distinct bridge program goals that can be organized into three categories: academic success goals, psychosocial goals, and department-level goals. Building on the findings of published bridge reports, we present a set of recommendations for STEM bridge programs in hopes of developing better bridges into college.

FIGURE 1.

Reports on bridge programs published from 1992 to 2016. (A) There have been 46 reports published on STEM bridge programs, the earliest of which was published in 1992. Twenty-six reports (57%) have been published in peer-reviewed journals, and 20 reports (43%) have been published in other formats (e.g., conference papers, theses). (B) There has been an increase in the number of bridge reports published since 1992, with the majority of reports published in peer-reviewed journals published since 2006.

FIGURE 2.

Characteristics of all STEM bridge programs. (A) STEM bridge programs are geared toward a variety of disciplines. While many STEM bridge programs are open to students across all STEM disciplines (33%), the majority of programs are specific to engineering students (50%). (B) STEM bridge programs are offered at private doctoral institutions, private master’s degree–granting institutions, and private bachelor’s degree–granting institutions, although bridge programs are primarily implemented at public, PhD-granting institutions (77%). (C) The majority of STEM bridge programs are designed for first-year students who are entering a 4-year university directly from high school (93%), and only two programs (7%) are designed for students transferring from a 2-year college into a 4-year university. (D) The length of STEM bridge programs varies widely, from 3 days to 8 weeks, with one online bridge program for which there is no set length, because students are able to participate for as long as they like between when they attend orientation and the first day of classes. (E) STEM bridge programs target students from varying backgrounds: 50% of programs specified targeting URM students, 20% specified targeting women, 20% specified targeting academically underprepared students, and 10% specified targeting highly academically prepared students.