STRATEGY 3

Campus College Connection

The Campus College Connection is a series of math-intensive summer bridge programs conducted at four Penn State campuses. Each program is tailored for specific campus cultures and is designed to assist students with academic transition from high school to technical college majors.

The Summer Bridge Program at University Park is known as the Academic Summer Enhancement (ASE). ASE is a four-week orientation targeting underrepresented engineering students. The program consists of a pre-calculus review course, an introductory Chemistry course, and an English course. The program seeks to hone these students’ academic skills during the month of July before they begin their first fall semester. Career counseling and corporate-site field trips are also an aspect of the Summer Bridge Program.

This program will serve as a template for coalition campuses to enact their own Summer Bridge Programs for students who are unable to relocate to University Park for four weeks. The coalition campus programs will be modified to accommodate students living at home who are juggling other activities, such as summer jobs, etc. Training programs will be held to aid administrators in creating bridge programs for their local campuses.

The Summer Bridge Program seeks to increase retention of STEM field students at University Park and throughout the fifteen coalition campuses.