Ohio's Sustainable Science and Engineering Talent Expansion Program (OSTEP) - Bridges to Success

Ohio State University Research Foundation -Do Not Use, Columbus OH

Investigators

Abstract

Through a partnership with three community colleges (Columbus State Community College, Stark State College of Technology and Washington State Community College) the Ohio State University is working in three distinct socioeconomic regions of the state to recruit and retain a broad population of STEM majors. A summer bridge program with curricular and industrial or research internship components introduces pre-college students to career options and guides them into appropriate secondary school and post-secondary options aimed at reducing the necessity for remediation at the college and university level. A second bridge program for transfer students from community colleges is reducing the barriers to success at university. Finally, peer-mentoring and academic support structures are in place within all of the collaborating institutions to maintain continuous support for the students through graduation. The intellectual merit of the project's activities rests on the large scale implementation of successful approaches for supporting a broad range of STEM students. Strong disciplinary faculty involvement and collaboration across the four campuses is also present, as well as significant institutional support. The broader impacts of the project lie in its establishment of a successful model of collaboration across STEM disciplines and among constituent two-year colleges and a major university. Secondly, the project has a self-sustaining capacity through the training of students to be mentors before they graduate and the provision of opportunities for them to continue mentoring after graduation.