for academic success.The GS Program Summer Bridge components include courses such as spatial visualization andengineering design to build background skills for engineering. Of importance are intentionalactivities to support building one’s community in the cohort and increase familiarity with thecampus, and seminars that increase students’ ability to navigate the higher education landscape.Students live and learn together in a residence hall as near peer mentors serve as residenceadvisors and teaching assistants during the two-week program. The program ends with anengineering design expo and a closing community building activity. These activities celebratethe beginning of the engineering pathway for GS Program students to convey their
those involved with the educational problem at issue. In this paper, we take up the long-discussed problem of struggling students inundergraduate engineering programs. Responses to the problem of struggling students have beenvaried; the following is a coarse literature review of some responses in order to position ourwork. Traditional quantitative retention research has documented the magnitude of the problemand clarified large-scale inequities in access to higher education in STEM based on gender, race,socioeconomic status (for example, Ong et al. and Seymour and Hewitt)2,3. This research oftendraws on a metaphor of the “leaky pipeline” to justify institutional remediation, includingsupport programs for racial, gender, and