Indiana University Northwest (IUN) will host its annual Summer Bridge Program this year from August 16 to 20. The program is still open for applicants to get involved before kicking off the 2021-22 school year.
Dr. Kristin Huysken is an associate professor of geology in the Department of Geosciences and is also an associated dean in the College of Arts and Sciences (COAS) at IUN. Dr. Huysken works on projects that enhance student success on IUN’s campus, which brought her to begin the Summer Bridge Program in 2016.
“In 2016, we were awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to run an extended orientation. It was called the Summer Bridge. At that time, it was just for students who were interested in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines, but since then, it has grown,” explained Dr. Huysken.
The program is no longer just funded by grants; IUN has taken it upon itself to expand the program to students in both STEM and humanities disciplines. In the future, IUN hopes to grow the program to also include social and behavioral science majors as well.
This year, IUN is running one session the week before classes start. From Monday, August 16 to Thursday, August 19, the program will take place between 9:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. On the last day, Friday, August 20, the program will meet between 2:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m., and IUN will provide dinner for the students.
“The goal of the bridge is that students will come into it in order to explore new interests, to develop skills that they need to be successful at college, and also to build confidence,” said Dr. Huysken. “Students are able to create a community with other students and faculty and develop relationships with peer mentors who have been in this program before.”
Students who sign up for the Summer Bridge can expect an activity-based model that prepares them with hands-on activities for what is to come in the next years during their time at IUN.
“Students review skills that they need for college success, like quantitative, writing, and speaking skills. Remediation is really embedded into these projects,” said Dr. Huysken. “For example, students who are interested in STEM fields would work on a problem like assessing water quality in our local waterways. Students who are aspiring to be in the humanities field would engage in activities that would involve performing arts, poetry, or history, and they would be engaged in projects that would examine the push and pull of industrial development and environmental preservation of our region, like the Indiana Dunes.”
IUN focuses on getting students involved in their local history, environment, and community. The college looks to help students develop connections between their academic activities and the local community. The program also asks students to broaden their disciplinary horizons and learn about multiple subjects throughout the week.
“We try to make the program interdisciplinary within the STEM disciplines, so the students might do a little bit of geology, a little bit of chemistry, a little bit of biology, a little bit of math, and a little bit of computer sciences,” said Dr. Huysken. “These are all rolled together, because one of the things that's really important for every citizen to understand is really the interplay of all of these disciplines. As students enter the university, they are not only educated in their specific discipline, but they take classes in related disciplines as well. The reason for that is because people need to draw on all sorts of skills to understand the world in various ways.”
The Summer Bridge Program aims to drive the message home that all disciplines within the COAS work together. The culminating projects that students create at the end of the week-long session are then showcased to the Summer Bridge group at large to display to one another that the sciences and arts do commingle.
The greatest aim of the Summer Bridge Program, though, is to build confidence in incoming student populations. Students are broken into groups throughout the week with people within their disciplines.
“They really get to know their cohort and other incoming students who are interested in the same disciplines. By the time classes start, they have friends and they have other students who they know well who they've worked with,” said Dr. Huysken.
Students don’t have to feel as if they are taking on the new school year alone because they’ve already built up a community. Students in the Summer Bridge Program are also able to build on skills for success in the classroom, like learning the campus and the university’s management system, Canvas. These bridge students learn how to navigate the Canvas dashboard before school even starts so that they aren’t overwhelmed at the beginning of the school year when trying to find their syllabus, look for homework, access the gradebook, or turn in an assignment.
Beyond building technical skills or relationships with their peers, students are also able to meet key staff members on IUN’s campus to familiarize them with their departments and build trust on campus.
“We just encourage students to interact with a lot of faculty during that week. The faculty interactions are a little different than sitting in a classroom. When you start school, especially if you're in large, lower-level classes or labs that students take at the beginning of college, you might not really get the same opportunity to get to know or work with your professor,” Dr. Huysken said. “This is an opportunity for students to interact with faculty on a much more personal level. They're working together, they're acting together, and they're learning together, students, faculty and peer mentors alike.”
These relationships and skills that students build during the Summer Bridge week have successful outcomes for students.
“We know that the students who take our Summer Bridge Program persist in college at higher rates than the general population of students,” explained Dr. Huysken. “We know it's also associated with higher GPAs from the first to the second year.”
IUN encourages students to sign up for the Summer Bridge Program because the college knows how successful it can make students. To promote that success, IUN offers students a $250 book tuition stipend to students who finish the week-long program. Students who complete the session are also eligible to add an additional credit hour onto their freshman seminar course in the first semester.
Registration for the Summer Bridge Program ends in early August. To register, visit www.iun.edu/coas/related-information/orientation-registration.