2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Evidence-Based Practice Research Brief Paper. Persistent challenges in first-year retention among engineering students underscore the need for intentional interventions that support academic, social, and professional transitions from high school to college. Summer Bridge Programs (SBPs) are well-established early interventions designed to ease this transition by preparing students academically and addressing the environmental and social factors that can jeopardize persistence in engineering. While SBPs have demonstrated positive outcomes across institutions varying in length, target population, and structure. Many evaluations assess general student gains without explicitly aligning program goals with measured student outcomes.
This study examines the effectiveness of a five-pillar Summer Bridge Program (SBP) at a large public university in the southeastern United States. The program is structured around five pillars: academic readiness, student bonding, hands-on learning, project-based learning, and career development, each aligned with specific learning outcomes that support holistic students’ growth beyond the classroom. Grounded in the Model of Co-Curricular Support (MCCS), this study investigates how participation in the SBP influences three primary constructs associated with student success: self-efficacy, sense of belonging, and career development.
A pretest–posttest quasi-experimental design was employed with 91 first-year engineering participants from two cohorts of the SBP. Students completed validated subscales aligned with program goals to measure educational constructs before and after the intervention. Data were analyzed using Repeated Measures Analysis of Covariance (RM-ANCOVA), with ACT Math scores as a covariate, to examine within-group changes across constructs. Results indicate a large and statistically significant improvement in students’ sense of inclusion, as well as a significant increase in institutional awareness, reflecting strengthened social integration and familiarity with institutional resources. Academic and professional development constructs demonstrated positive but more modest gains.
These findings contribute to the evidence base for SBPs by demonstrating the value of aligning program design and assessment with a theoretical co-curricular framework. The study highlights which program components may drive the strongest student gains and offers a transferable assessment approach for improving early engineering interventions.