Four-Day
Bridge Program and First-Year Cohort
Coordinators:Drs. G. Faye
Boudreaux-Bartels and Mercedes A. Rivero-Hudec
In summer 2000, 20 new women students will be closely mentored in a
four-day overnight program as they transition from high school to college into engineering
majors. Students will learn more about careers in engineering and will participate in
hands-on experiments to introduce them to university labs and to demonstrate experiential
learning. The students will live in college dorms to network and form bonds to decrease
the isolation they often feel in the traditionally male classes. Faculty will help
students with plans for curriculum schedules, research and professional involvement to
maximize interest and retention. Drs. Boudreaux-Bartels and Rivero-Hudec successfully
conducted this program for women engineering students in 1995 and 1996 with funding from
EASNE (Engineering Academy of Southern New England) in a grant from the NSF. Of the 20
students, eight have become officers of the Society of Women Engineers, and five of them
have volunteered to help run any future engineering bridge camps.
During the bridge program, students will be encouraged to enroll in the
same sections of six courses they will take in their first academic year-EGR 105 and 106
Foundations of Engineering, MTH 141 Introductory Calculus with Analytical Geometry, and
PHY 203, 273, 204 and 274 Elementary Physics I and II with the respective labs-so as to
become an LC of the "student cohorts in larger classes" model (MacGregor et al.
1998, Love and Tokuno 1999). Students will be encouraged to form study groups and work
collaboratively. During the fall and spring semesters of 2000–01, Drs.
Boudreaux-Bartels and Rivero-Hudec will meet with the students as a group once every two
weeks for the first two months and once a month thereafter. These meetings will help
students strengthen social and academic networks among their peers. A separate set of
meetings will be sponsored by SWE (Society of Women Engineers) will include workshops on
communication skills, résumé writing, and career paths.
