Date of Award
1-1-2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ed.D. in Education
First Advisor
Kerry B. Melear
Second Advisor
Whitney Webb
Third Advisor
David Rock
School
University of Mississippi
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
There is a growing demand for a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) trained workforce in the United States. In order to remain globally competitive, the US needs to increase the STEM workforce not only in numbers but also diversity. Colleges and universities throughout the US need to not only gain STEM majors but retain them through graduation. Research has shown that the majority of STEM students struggle their first year in college for a variety of reasons. Many academics agree that incoming freshman need to integrate both socially and academically to prevent attrition. This has led to the creation of summer bridge programs whose aims include better preparation for gateway courses, smoother transitions from high school to college, and providing incoming students the ability to integrate both socially and academically. As summer bridge programs increase, so does the need to evaluate the success of these programs. The University of Mississippi’s biology department created the Biology Bootcamp, a summer bridge program, geared at introducing incoming freshmen to the rigors of a gateway course. The Biology Bootcamp ran from 2012 through 2019 with a total of 1314 participants over the years. This program has never been evaluated to determine if it was successful in helping the students transition from high school into college. This Dissertation in Practice (DiP) will lay out the plan to evaluate the former Biology Bootcamp at UM to determine the program’s effectiveness and steps moving forward.
Recommended Citation
Lewis, Nicole, "A quantitative study of the effectiveness of the University of Mississippi's Biology Bootcamp" (2024). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2950.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/2950