Education Commons^™

Can A Summer Bridge Program Impact First-Year Persistence And Performance?: A Case Study Of The New Start Summer Program, Nolan L. Cabrera, Danielle D. Miner, Jeffrey F. Milem

Nolan L. Cabrera

This longitudinal study assesses the impact of the University of Arizona’s New Start Summer Program (NSSP) on participants’ first year GPA and retention, controlling for incoming student characteristics. While programmatic participation significantly predicted first-year GPA and retention, this relationship became insignificant when controlling for first-year college experiences and student development. Programmatic efficacy is largely determined not only by how practitioners develop participants’ cognitive abilities, but also how effectively they connect them to social and academic support networks during their first year of college. Within this context, programmatic impact is likely indirect which poses a number of methodological and resource allocation …