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This study examines the impact of participation in a STEM Enrichment Summer Bridge Program, funded by the NSF Houston-Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation, on undergraduate student success outcomes, particularly for under-represented students.

The study uses propensity score matching and logistic regression analysis to examine the effects of participation in the STEM enrichment program on graduation and retention in STEM after matching on baseline socio-demographic and pre-college characteristics.

The analysis found that program participation had a significant effect on increasing both the graduation rates and retention of under-represented minority students in STEM fields. In addition, results indicated that program participation had a particularly strong impact for Pell-eligible students in terms of course grades.

Data obtained for this study were limited to a single Hispanic-serving/Asian-serving institution, and therefore are not necessarily representative of the graduation and retention trends of the larger population of underrepresented minority (URM) students across the nation.

This study uniquely adds to the existing body of literature surrounding the retention of URM students in STEM fields by accounting for baseline variables, such as pre-college academic achievement and socio-demographic characteristics, that could lead to bias in estimating results. Specifically, this study addresses limitations of previous studies by comparing participants and non-participants of the STEM enrichment program who are matched on a selection of baseline characteristics.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how to examine the effectiveness of a pilot summer bridge program for elementary algebra using propensity scores. Typically, selection into treatment programs, such as summer bridge programs, is based on self-selection. Self-selection makes it very difficult to estimate the true treatment effect because the selection process itself often introduces a source of bias.

By using propensity scores, the authors can match students who participated in the summer bridge program with equivalent students who did not participate in the summer bridge program. By matching students in the treatment group to equivalent students who do not participate in the treatment, the authors can obtain an unbiased estimate of the treatment effect. The authors also describe a method to conduct a sensitivity analysis to estimate the amount of hidden bias generated from unobserved factors that would be needed to alter the inferences made from a propensity score matching analysis.

Findings suggest there is no significant difference in the pass rates of the subsequent intermediate algebra course for students who participated in the summer bridge program when compared to matched students who did not participate in the summer bridge program. Thus, students who participate in the summer bridge program fared no better or worse when compared to similar students who do not participate in the program. These findings also appear to be robust to hidden bias.

This study describes a unique way to estimate the causal effect of participating in a treatment program when there is self-selection into the treatment program.

This paper aims to convey the experiences of an academic librarian in providing services to students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) so that it may aide other librarians who also work with these students.

This paper does this by detailing a support program, the Bridges to Adelphi Program, for students on the spectrum and illustrates the nature of the disorder, strategies that have been used in working with these students and reflections on and implications of these strategies.

This paper provides information on practical strategies used and in detail descriptions of this work and conveys findings on which strategies are used and why and which strategies succeeded and which did not.

One limitation of this paper is that other universities may not have a well-organized and well-developed support program such as the Bridges to Adelphi Program. However, it does provide advice on working with students on the spectrum even in the absence of such a program. Future avenues for research include the collection and evaluation of data on learning outcomes that these techniques have on students with ASD.

The specific librarian interventions detailed in this paper will provide advice and models that other librarians can use.

This paper is distinguished from other scholarship in that it is addressed to the librarian and not teaching faculty, and in the small amount of literature that is addressed to the librarian, this paper differs in that it does not solely offer suggestions but provides a real-world accounting of strategies and interventions used.

With Complete College America and renewed interest in performance‐based funding models for higher education, colleges are focused on improving retention, progression and graduation rates. Many schools bring lower‐achieving students to campus for a pre‐first‐year program called Summer Bridge to give them an introduction to college. These summer programs have varying levels of library involvement. The authors aim to compare the level of library involvement at their institution with that of libraries where similar programs exist.

The authors searched for schools with summer bridge programs, read through their program descriptions to find ones that were similar to their own situation (e.g. not STEM‐focused or Upward Bound), and sent a survey to 103 libraries. In total, 42 responded.

Of the responding libraries 88 percent have face‐to‐face instruction with the summer bridge participants, however only 33 percent of the libraries did any assessment of this contact. Ten of the respondents teach credit‐bearing information literacy courses, but none offers this to the summer bridge students.

Many states require institutions to demonstrate student success in order to compete for limited state funds. Libraries have an important role to student success and librarians should strategically place themselves within that conversation. This article provides some possible means to help with summer bridge students.

A search through library and education literature reveals that little has been written about library involvement with programs that are not Upward Bound affiliated. This case study and its survey respond to a gap in the literature of both fields.

Current research on millennials primarily focuses on their behavior within an academic or workplace setting. This study expands on previous analysis by exploring how millennials respond to community leadership efforts, particularly cohort leadership programs. Participant outcomes from University of Minnesota Extension’s County Bridging Leadership Program revealed that millennials—particularly those without a four-year degree—experienced significantly higher gains in several skill areas relevant to community development than non- millennials. Recruiting more millennials to participate in community leadership programs is critical not only to keep younger people in rural communities but also to strengthen future community vitality.

As our communities strive to support community change efforts for survival and vitality, the importance of social capital has become evident in leadership development. Many researchers and practitioners realize that tapping into the inherent power of relationships and social networks is crucial. This paper provides an overview of the design and evaluation of Bridging Brown County, a countywide community leadership development program that was explicitly designed to build social capital as well as human capital. By integrating social and human capital constructs into the program design, impacts have been measured in domains of other community capitals. The results of the impact study provide insight into developing and measuring the success of community leadership programs.

The purpose of this paper is to gain insight about the experience of multicultural administrators who oversee bridge program designed to recruit and retain historically underrepresented students of color. The study was also designed to capture the experience of the multicultural administrator as well as what meaning they made of their role as a diversity leader, and the challenges they face as they try to meet diversity goals under the constraints of race neutrality.

This is a descriptive qualitative multi-case study. In order to gain a better understanding of the experience of multicultural administrators as they try to enact diversity leadership under race-neutral policies a qualitative phenomenological multi-case designed was used. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with multicultural administrators from four institutions within a southern state of the USA.

Data reveals that seeking to increase and foster diversity on predominantly white campuses under race neutrality is challenging. Many of the administrators expressed concern about how they would maintain and increase diversity and campus inclusiveness without specifically marketing and targeting to groups that are traditionally marginalized. Overall, they described the experience as one filled with heightened awareness of the social and political environment and how senior-level administrators and other offices on campus perceived them and their work.

Using a qualitative multi-case study limits generalizability. Also, there are many other factors such as institutional type, location, student population, and institutional capacity that may impact the institutional conditions in which each of these administrators work.

The findings of this study can be used to inform institutional policy makers of these struggles as well as provide campus administrators and staff helpful recommendations for dealing with the politics of race neutrality as they continue to fulfill their responsibility to increase diversity on their campuses.

This paper may raise awareness about the challenges of employing race neutrality, particularly for states and institutions concerned with diversifying higher education. It also highlights the challenges leaders face when dealing with reduced funding and policies that do not support their work.

The paper discusses an understudied and under-recognized group of diversity leaders dealing with a current race-neutral policies. It will be of interests to institutional leaders, multicultural administrators, and other types of diversity leaders in higher education.

It is estimated that there are some 49,000 bridges throughout Great Britain which were not built to comply with national loading standards, introduced in 1922, or were built before the standards were introduced. Some of these bridges were assessed for their load‐carrying capacity in the early 1970s in a programme called ‘Operation Bridgeguard’. The Department of Transport is once more assessing older bridges in a three part programme to:

InterAct's Bridges to Work programme aims to help adults recovering from mental illness return to work or find employment for the first time. Since its inception in 1995, the programme has helped some 250 people find jobs or go into further education and supported 600 others towards this goal. Paul Edwards describes how recently the focus has switched to early intervention and fast‐tracking people back to work, to prevent the socially disabling effects of long‐term sickness absence.

Since it started in May 1998, InterAct's Bridges to Education programme has helped over 1000 clients with mental health issues to access lifelong learning. The underlying purpose of the programme is to help clients involve themselves in their communities. Client feedback about the benefits is overwhelmingly positive. A few clients have not been helped. This article looks at factors that have led to the successes and factors that may have contributed to the small number of failures.