Breaking Down Barriers: A Bridge Program Helps First-Year Biology Students Connect With Faculty

Summer bridge programs often aim to build social connections forfirst-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 between students and faculty. We found that first-year students who participated in the bridge program had greater comfort and connections with faculty compared with matched students who did not participate in the bridge program. However, there were no differences in the comfort and connections with peers for students who participated in the bridge program compared with matched students who did not participate in the program. Bridge students reported specific elements of the bridge program that they perceived led to greater comfort and connections with faculty, which can help guide bridge developers in the design of their programs aimed to enhance student relationships with faculty. This study adds to the growing literature on bridge programs and demonstrates how a bridge program can be designed to lead to increased comfort and social connections with faculty.