|
HOWARD HUGHES MEDICAL INSTITUTE SYMPOSIUM:
Summer Programs Give Students
a Head Start
There are many reasons why underrepresented minority (URM) students do not pursue science majors and postgraduate degrees in science fields. But at least for university biology, students' academic success in their freshman year is an important factor in determining whether they will graduate with a science major, according to a preliminary analysis of data gathered from diversity symposia participants.
Institutions invited to the four diversity symposia were asked to provide both the enrollment of underrepresented minority (URM) students in introductory biology and chemistry classes and their grades for a three-year period. At the January 2008 symposium, Wendy Raymond, associate professor of biology at Williams College, presented a preliminary analysis of the numbers supplied by 24 colleges and 25 universities. While the data are not complete and are not representative of the entire country, they indicate that the proportion of URM students enrolled in science classes begins to drop by the time these students complete their second science course, Raymond says.
These data provide a quantitative measure of a problem that many faculty members have already identified anecdotally. "If students have a bad experience in the first science courses, they typically leave science," says Craig Woodard of Mount Holyoke College.
Making the transition easier
One reason that many URM students abandon science majors so soon after starting college is that they come from poorly equipped or staffed high schools and are therefore not fully prepared for college-level courses. Isolation is another challenge for a minority student entering a majority institution. "There is a sense of, 'Is there anyone in the same situation as me?'" explains Woodard.
For that reason, URM students might benefit from academic instruction, research exposure, and meeting their peers during the summer before starting college. "One of the major challenges is the adjustment to college life, and the summer program makes the transition easier," says Woodard. After hearing about bridge programs at an earlier symposium, Woodard helped start a summer bridge program at Mount Holyoke that offers research experience, and he now plans to introduce several components of the summer bridge throughout the first academic year.
Pamela Baker, director of faculty research and scholarship at Bates College, says that a summer bridge program started in 2007 at Bates allowed students to bond with one another over the summer months and to get to know their faculty. "By September, they had a footing here. In fact, some were so socially assimilated that they became campus leaders," she says.
An alternative to bridges: Boot camps
"Boot camps" are a new intervention strategy that might be able to offer the benefits of a summer bridge program without requiring a long commitment. Sheri Wischusen, assistant director for undergraduate research at Louisiana State University (LSU), and her husband, biology professor William Wischusen, invited a group of students to LSU for a week, just before the start of the fall semester, and had them do a "trial run"—taking classes and exams that did not count toward the final grade.
Now in its third year, the program—called BIOS (Biology Intensive Orientation for Students)—provides content lectures equivalent to the first quarter of the introductory biology course and three exams. In addition, the students receive mentoring on study skills, meet faculty and visit labs, and make friends. "We keep them busy from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. We want them to experience the pace of life of college," says Wischusen.
Wischusen said they came up with the boot camp idea because they did not have the resources to implement a more lengthy bridge program during the summer. But the approach worked. "When I look at the published data, [the program] is at least as effective as some of the programs that go for six weeks in the summer."
Data so far show that students in the program are retained in the biology major at twice the rate of similar students who are not in the program. "Some people were skeptical that one week would do anything, but when we got the data, the dean was really behind it. Other departments are looking at what we are doing," says Wischusen.
|
