Summer Bridge Program
| Day and Time: |
Monday through Friday seven - week residential program |
| Activities: |
|
| Orientation |
June 28, 2009 |
| Program Dates |
June 29 - August 14, 2009 |
| Closing |
August 14, 2009 |
The Emerging Ethnic Engineers (E3) Summer Bridge Program (19th year) is a seven-week residential program for incoming under-represented ethnic engineering freshman. The objective of the program is to create a "learning community" of E3 students who develop the academic and social skills necessary for achieving academic excellence from the freshman year through graduation. This process begins with the structure of the courses (Pre- Calculus, Calculus, Chemistry, English, Introduction to Physics and Physics, taken during the program. Textbooks used during the summer program are the same for the academic year.
All instructors use collaborative learning, an instructional method that requires students to interact on a higher level than in a traditional classroom setting. It involves learning methods and techniques using cooperative task structures in which students spend time working in 4-6 member heterogeneous groups. Students are required to work collectively toward the common goal of mastering the course material.
Summer bridge students have an opportunity to understand the relevance of their course work through visits to area companies. This year's visits were to Procter and Gamble, General Electric Aircraft Engines, and the Toyota Motor Engineering and Manufacturing North America, Inc. headquarters in Erlanger, Kentucky. They also visited Toyota's Georgetown, Kentucky manufacturing plant, which produces the Avalon, Camry, Camry Hybrid, and the Solara vehicles. The visit to General Electric reinforced the importance of the E3 program as told by our hosts, six former E3 students all of which participated in the Summer Bridge Program.
During the last week of the program students complete their final exams and attend an exit interview for each course. All students are required to prepare a written assessment of their performance, and they receive a written assessment from each instructor. The objective of the assessments and exit interview is to give students specific information as it relates to their academic and social development. In an effort to have the students use the information from the assessments and exit interviews, all instructors prepare homework for students to complete and turn in on weekly basis up to the start of fall quarter.
The process of building the E3 learning community initiates with summer bridge program and is fully implemented through the E3 Learning Community courses students register for in the fall, (registration at orientation during the bridge program) winter, and spring quarter of their first year.
This year's program included students from Alabama, California, Georgia, Michigan, and New Jersey. We are also proud that (36%) of the participants were women.
