Lessons and challenges from ten years of the Ohio State Physics Bridge Program

The Ohio State University Physics Bridge-to-the-PhD Program is a post-baccalaureate program focusing on students from diverse backgrounds who have shown strong potential for Physics PhD studies, but who were not accepted into PhD programs following their bachelors degrees. Bridge Fellows benefit from a program of active mentorship, targeted academic preparation, and research training, to help them enter and thrive as PhD students. In this talk, I’ll share some of our experiences during the first 10 years of the OSU Physics Bridge program, and look ahead to anticipated challenges for the next 10 years.

For context, a proposal from OSU Physics in 2013 was selected for seed funding to be one of two inaugural APS Bridge Sites. Since our first cohort in 2014, the Physics Bridge Program has supported 35 students, with 5 currently in the program. Of the remaining 30 students, 22 successfully transitioned to the OSU Physics PhD program, and 9 of these have finished their PhDs. The Physics BP has also catalyzed a number of evidence-based practices that have positively impacted the PhD program as a whole, including an emphasis on holistic admissions, incoming assessments for individualized course placements, guided group work sessions to improve conceptual understanding of core graduate course material, and the establishment of a graduate learning assistant position. Perhaps most importantly, the Physics BP has empowered Bridge Fellows to establish a sustainable community, providing peer mentoring and support.

I’ll discuss our efforts to leverage the Physics BP to help foster STEM diversity more broadly through engagement in multi-department and multi-institutional initiatives. For example, the Physics BP helped establish similar programs in other departments at Ohio State, including Astronomy, Chemistry and Earth Sciences. We have partnered with the APS Bridge Program, and the Inclusive Graduate Education Network (IGEN) to share best practices across institutions and other disciplines. Lastly, OSU Physics has joined an NSF-funded team studying strategies for institutionalizing culture change: Inclusive Graduate Programs: An AGEP Pilot in Physics, which features nearly 20 participating institutions.