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THE EVOLUTION OF THE EDGE PROGRAM IN ITS FOURTH YEAR

This paper presents the results of the fourth iteration of the EDGE (Early Development of General Engineering) Summer Bridge Program that was initiated in 20031. This year the project was completely supported by a grant (MSEIP #P120A050080) from the Department of Education.

Brief History of the Program

The original program was geared toward well-prepared high school students in the 10th and 11th grades who would have participated in the San Antonio Pre-freshman Engineering Program (PREP)2. EDGE introduced them to college level course work as a learning community and provided activities to help them develop independent learning and teamwork skills with the goal of increasing their likelihood of earning a college degree in engineering, science, math, or other related field. The learning community courses offered were Introduction to Engineering and College Algebra. The number of applicants eligible for College Algebra was disappointingly low (32%). This prompted us to change the way we advertised and structured the program for the second year.

The change in marketing strategy was effective, and the number of applications increased considerably from the first year. However, only half of all applicants met college admission requirements, and an even smaller fraction of them qualified for College Algebra. The learning community courses offered were Introduction to Engineering and Computer Literacy. While the results of the 2004 Program were good, they were not quite as good as the 2003 Program, and students were not sufficiently challenged by the Computer Literacy course3. This prompted us to return to our original program design for 2005, with a single track offering College Algebra and Introduction to Engineering, and to add 12th graders to our targeted student population. The results of this strategy also fell short of expectations and we decided to again offer Introduction to Engineering and a slightly more rigorous version of Computer Literacy as the learning community courses. As before, the coursework was supplemented by computer assisted Math sessions in the afternoon4.

For 2006, the program was revised to address shortcomings of previous years, and extended to provide opportunity for student involvement over the entire school year. The Computer Literacy course was replaced with an enhanced Conceptual Physics course and the afternoon computer assisted math training was extended and made mandatory. An enhanced fall semester Saturday College Algebra course was offered to all qualified current and previous EDGE students, with the possibility to continue with a Pre-Calculus course offered on Saturdays during the spring 2007 semester.

Program Details

As in previous years, EDGE students were required to meet the same admission requirements as other college-level students, and paid only a $25 entry fee. And like the previous eight week programs, students attended the two classes in the morning from 9:00 AM to noon, Monday through Friday with afternoon activities consisting of supervised study (SS1) and student success

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Dimitriu, D., & O'Connor, J. (2007, June), The Evolution Of The Edge Program In Its Fourth Year Paper presented at 2007 Annual Conference & Exposition, Honolulu, Hawaii. 10.18260/1-2--1601