The research will be based around Penn State’s summer bridge building program.

This Isn’t Just Another Student Bridge Competition

Remarkably, Penn State’s research shows that these collaborative, fun and often light competitions have a significant effect on student retention.

“Data showed that students completing summer bridges were almost twice as likely to stay in engineering as those who did not complete a bridge program,” said Amy Freeman, assistant dean of engineering diversity. Furthermore, she noted that many of the students that participated in the program have become leaders in their engineering fields.

“This grant,” she said, “allows us to implement new collaborative programming, which will increase the number and diversity of graduating engineers at Penn State.”

Penn State’s bridge program has a significant focus on math. This separates their bridge competition from others that often feature students “going with their gut” when building their bridge.

“Math preparation is a key component to success for STEM majors,” said Freeman. “For a variety of reasons, incoming engineering students are often not ready for the math that is required to graduate with an engineering degree. However, students in the summer bridge programs establish peer teams and are better prepared to enter the fall semester with a realistic view of the work required in college.”

The school also separates their bridge program from others bridge competitions with:

• Site visits to technical firms
• Hands-on application of engineering concepts
• Project building
• Guidance and mentoring
• Financial and follow-up support.

The program also mentors students to support retention through their first year of study.

Ensuring Racially Underrepresented Engineering Students Stick to STEM

This current research will focus on the three-year retention rates of racially underrepresented engineering students. Freeman notes that this statistic is an accurate predictor to a student’s graduation due to the challenges engineering students often face in their second year of study.

Currently, “The three-year retention rate is 44 percent for all engineering students at the non-University Park campuses but it is 61 percent at University Park. These summer bridge programs are designed to increase those retention rates,” explained Freeman. 

Since more than half of the school’s racially-underrepresented and first-generation students attend one of the commonwealth campuses, the bridge program will be expanded to Penn State’s other campuses to reach their high population of the target audience. These campuses include Abington, Altoona, Berks and University Park.

“We hope to bring this successful retention tool to more Penn State campuses in the future and increase the number of students graduating in engineering and other STEM fields,” said Freeman. “This recent NSF grant is a positive first step.”

Significance to Engineering and STEM Programs

Diversity plays an important role in the engineering field. Innovation and different perspectives will increase when there are more individuals who have variant backgrounds and ways of thinking. However, there are still diversity issues in STEM. Therefore, the goal of many STEM programs is to not only increase the number of people educated in this discipline, but to improve diversity as well.

“We, as a nation, for our competitiveness, and certainly we, as a corporation, with sixty thousand engineers, scientists, and technologists, need to be able to tap into what has been historically the non-represented,” said Ray Johnson, Lockheed Martin’s CTO. “This includes minorities, women and girls in engineering and science. We need to tap into that workforce for our future, because our engineering workforce in the corporation needs to look like the neighborhoods in the cities, in the states, that they live in. And today they don't necessarily.”

“The part that’s a really important component of diversity is linkage to innovation,” he added. “What we find is that people with a different perspective, not just race, creed and color, but different background, different education, different environments, they come in and look at a problem in a very different way. And as they do, they bring innovative solutions.”

Many STEM programs as of late have been focusing primarily on one demographic, women in STEM. Improving the female population in STEM is a very important aim. And this goal is especially important in engineering, which has significantly lopsided numbers when looking at the sexes.

However, with this focus on women in STEM, there hasn’t been much news about racially-underrepresented engineering and STEM students. In order for engineering and other STEM professions to be truly diverse, the number of minorities entering these fields must increase. It is refreshing, and promising, to see Penn State and the NSF focus on these underrepresented demographics. Perhaps this is a step toward similar STEM programs focusing on minority-centered opportunities.

Do you have any fond memories of fun engineering competitions from your studies? Did it help you to stick with the program? Do you know of STEM programs focusing on racially underrepresented demographics? Comment below.