Mentoring Bridge Model

Each of the above Bridges will have a faculty mentor that facilitates Bridge meetings and provides additional individual mentoring to participants at participating institutions. Alumni are invited to provide additional mentoring. Bridges will meet separately during the second and fourth months of Fall semester and will meet together during the first and third months. Guest speakers, alumni and professionals, are invited to talk to the students when Bridges meet together. Some of the monthly meetings could take place during annual research conferences and graduate fairs.

Clusters: The Bridge Model includes cascading mentoring whereby students are grouped into clusters of 4-8 students in which students (NextGen STEM Fellows) from the Graduate Bridge mentor students (NextGen STEM Scholars) in the Bridge to Post-Baccalaureate who in turn mentor scholars in the Bridge to Baccalaureate. Thus, within each cluster, seniors mentor juniors, juniors mentor sophomores, and sophomores mentor freshmen. Graduate students will be mentored by faculty. In this regard, a vertical peer mentor serves as a resource, a helping hand, a sounding board, a role model, coach, friend, and advisor. The mentor provides support, encouragement, and information to students in their cluster, including but not limited to academic matters. Each cluster will have a Lead and a co-Lead.

Each cluster is to meet face-to-face for two hours per week, or as determined by STEM faculty mentor. No faculty mentor will be present at these meetings. This gives students the opportunity to interact with their peers in a less formal setting and discuss topics and issues that they may not otherwise be comfortable with, have time for, or have the desire to discuss in a larger setting or with the faculty mentor present. Some activities at these meetings include students sharing research papers they have authored, new/cool things they have learned in recent weeks in class, and fun or interesting things that happened outside the classroom on their campus. The mentoring will continue virtually after the face-to-face meeting via social media. During a pandemic, face-face meetings will temporarily go virtual. Faculty mentor(s) will meet cluster leaders at least twice a semester to discuss challenges that students are facing that could be discussed at monthly meetings and/or taken to central administration by faculty mentors.

Ensuring STEM Success: Participation in the Bridge Mentoring Model is mandatory for NextGen STEM Pathways Foundation scholarship and internship recipients.