Since its creation in 2004, The Fisk-Vanderbilt Master’s-to-PhD Bridge Program has become the national model for identifying and fostering underrepresented minority talent at the PhD level in Materials Science, Physics, Astronomy, Chemistry, Biology, and Biomedical Science. After 16 years, 145 students have enrolled in the program, 107 Master’s degrees have been awarded, 101 students have bridged to PhD programs, and 36 students have earned the PhD, 28 of those from Vanderbilt. Today, 27 students are in a Vanderbilt PhD program, while 23 are in a Fisk Master’s program (see Appendix A). 58% of the students are African-American, 24% Hispanic, 3% other minority, including Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, and 15% white or other non-minority. 56% are female. Overwhelmingly, the student population has been underserved in intersecting ways, with many also being first-generation college students, of low socioeconomic status, and/or with disabilities.
Bridge students on the PhD side are part of the College of Arts and Science, the School of Engineering and the School of Medicine. The majority of support in both the Master’s and PhD phase consists of individual and programmatic federal grants. At the program level we receive support from the Department of Education, NSF and NIH, as well as individual Fisk and Vanderbilt faculty awards from the Department of Defense, NASA and NSF research and CAREER grants. Approximately $310 million dollars of external funding has supported the program -- federal funding continues to be the key to sustaining the FVBP. This is achieved in part through continuous grant writing by the program administration and faculty. We actively create new collaborations between Vanderbilt and Fisk faculty, resulting in grants and publications shared between institutions.
Why the Bridge Matters: Changing the face of a field
We describe the program model and its underlying theory in Appendix B. The success of our practices is born out in our programmatic outcomes and the national attention our program has received. The past few years have seen important gains in the awarding of STEM Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, however there is still a significant gap in STEM PhDs and the professoriate (NSF, 2017). Underrepresented minorities (URMs) are over 30% of our national demographic but receive less than 8% of the STEM PhDs. Within that landscape, the FVBP makes a significant impact. In astronomy, for example, given the incredibly low number of URM in physics and astronomy, FVBP makes the largest contribution of any single US institution. Data from the American Physical Society indicates that only 4 out of 126 Astronomy PhDs and only 20 of over a 1000 Physics PhDs awarded between 2013 and 2017 went to African-Americans (APS, 2019). Over half of those 24 students came through the Bridge Program. We have an extraordinary retention rate compared to US programs: the national 10-year completion rate for URMs to a STEM PhD is 44%, with the highest attrition rate (47%) in physical and mathematical sciences. We have an 84% retention rate from the Masters to PhD transition, and once students enter the PhD, we have an 84% 7-year completion rate.
Why the Bridge Matters: Finding and fostering unrecognized excellence
Despite the common misperception that Bridge programs focus on ‘fixing the student’, the data show that the FVBP cohort is exceptionally talented; students earn national fellowships and awards approaching twice the rate of their traditional PhD track counterparts (see Appendix C), publish at the same rate, and keep apace of their traditional counterparts in graduate coursework. Our PhD graduates are also highly sought after for employment, with all PhD graduates having at least one employment offer before graduation. Alumni are primarily employed in academia, industry and national labs (Figure 1, left). These include 4 tenure track faculty at Alabama A&M, Penn State, Dartmouth, and Michigan State University. It is clear our students are making a vital contribution to the STEM workforce.
Why the Bridge Matters: Influencing the graduate education landscape.
Our programmatic and student outcomes, accomplished without the use of traditional admission metrics, have brought us national attention and acclaim. The FVBP has been featured by National Public Radio (Haruch, 2014), The Chronicle of Higher Education (Patel, 2016), twice in Nature (Powell, 2013; Rudolph et al., 2019) and in many other media outlets (Epstein, 2010; Oguntoyinbo, 2010; Jost, 2011; Whittaker and Montgomery, 2012; Chubin,2014; Brockmeier, 2019; Daniel, 2019). We have been referenced in educational research articles, in reports from the American Institute for Research, the Council of Graduate Schools (Kent et al., 2016), the Educational Testing Service (Michel et al. 2019), and the director has even testified to Congress. Our available online toolkit for practitioners has been downloaded over 500 times. We were the answer to the Daily Double in June 9th’s episode of Jeopardy (and the contestant got it right!).
The FVBP model has been adapted and adopted for many other Bridge Programs. Most notably, The American Physical Society (APS) used the FVBP model for its highly successful Minority PhD Bridge Program (Hodapp and Woodle, 2017), which now includes over 20 other institutions. The APS has expanded these efforts and is now leading the NSF funded Inclusive Graduate Education Network and is working with the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the American GeoSciences Society, meaning our practices are reaching wider than ever (APS, 2018; ACS, 2020).
The FVBP has now taken things to the next level by generating new knowledge on the science of broadening participation. In 2018, we were awarded a LSAMP Regional Center of Excellence in Broadening Participation (NSF, 2018). This social science study partners with the American Institute for Research, and the Vanderbilt Peabody School of Education to investigate what components of the program are most valuable to the students, evaluate the use of admission practices by faculty, as well as build our Toolkit into a Guide that provides not just the tool but an analysis of the supporting literature. The research has already proved illuminating and generated changes in our interview protocol, student approach and understanding of our best practices.
References
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