Since its creation in 2004, The Fisk-Vanderbilt Master’s-to-PhD Bridge Program has become the national model for identifying and fostering talented scholars at the PhD level in Materials Science, Physics, Astronomy, Chemistry, Biology, and Biomedical Science.
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 Sloan Foundation, 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. We actively create new collaborations between Vanderbilt and Fisk faculty, resulting in grants and publications shared between institutions.
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, 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 nearly all PhD graduates having at least one employment offer before graduation. Alumni are primarily employed in academia, industry and national labs. 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 how to admit and retain graduate students from atypical backgrounds. 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
“About ACS Bridge Program.” American Chemical Society. Accessed May 21, 2020. https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/students/graduate/bridge-project/about-bridge-program.html.
Beckford, Brian. Bridge Programs as an approach to improving diversity in physics. Proceedings of Science (ICHEP2016) 313 (2017) https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.08011.pdf
Brockmeier, Erica K. Bridge to Ph.D. program provides a way forward for greater access in STEM fields. Penn Today Science & Technology (2019) Bridge to Ph.D. program provides a way forward for greater access in STEM fields
Cal-Bridge: Creating pathways to the PhD for underrepresented students in physics and astronomy, Alexander L. Rudolph, Physics Today 72, 10, 50 (2019) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-019-0962-1#citeas
Chubin, Daryl E. Eye on Ph.D. production (Part 2): The Fisk-Vanderbilt 'Miracle'. American Association for the Advancement of Science (2011) https://www.aaas.org/eye-phd-production-part-2-fisk-vanderbilt-miracle
Daniel, Marbella. Considering the Whole Student. Symmetry (2019) Considering the whole student | symmetry magazine
Epstein, Jennifer. Bridge from Bachelor's to Ph.D. Inside Higher Ed (2010) Bridge From Bachelor's to Ph.D.
Evans, T.M. et al. Evidence for a mental health crisis in graduate education. Nature Biotechnology 36, 3, 282-284 (2018) https://psgsc.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/205/2018/05/Evans_et_al_2018_mental_health_crisis-1.pdf
Haruch, Steve. A Graduate Program Works to Diversify the Science World. NPR Code Sw!tch (2014) A Graduate Program Works To Diversify The Science World
Hodapp, Theodore and Woodle, Kathryne S. A bridge between undergraduate and doctoral degrees. Physics Today 70, 2, 50 (2017) http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.3464
Hofstra, B. et al. The Diversity–Innovation Paradox in Science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117, 17, 9284-9291 (2020) https://www.pnas.org/content/117/17/9284
Jost, Ashley. Fisk and Vanderbilt Build ‘Bridge’ to Science Degrees. Education Writers Association (2014) Fisk and Vanderbilt Build 'Bridge' to Science Degrees
Kent, J.D. and McCarthy, M.T. Holistic Review in Graduate Admissions: A Report from the Council of Graduate Schools. Washington, DC: Council of Graduate Schools (2016) https://cgsnet.org/publication-pdf/3495/CGS_HolisticReview_final_web.pdf
Lipson, S.K., Kern, A., Eisenberg, D., Breland-Noble, A.M. Mental Health Disparities Among College Students of Color. Journal of Adolescent Health 63, 3, 348-356 (2018) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2018.04.014
Louis Stokes Midwest Regional Center of Excellence. Indiana University (2018) Louis Stokes Midwest Regional Center of Excellence
Michel, R. S., Belur, V., Naemi, B., & Kell, H. J. Graduate Admissions Practices: A Targeted Review of the Literature. ETS Research Report No. RR-19-33 (2019) https://doi.org/10.1002/ets2.12271
NSF awards 6 Louis Stokes regional centers of excellence to broaden participation in STEM. NSF News Release 18-083 (2018) https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=296504
Oguntoyinbo, Lekan. Fisk-Vanderbilt Program Set to Become Top Producer of Minority Scientists. Diverse Issues in Higher Education (2010) Fisk-Vanderbilt Program Set to Become Top Producer of Minority…
Patel, Vimel. Building a Better ‘Bridge’ to the Ph.D. Chronicle of Higher Education (2016) Building a Better ‘Bridge’ to the Ph.D.
Poffenberger, Leah. IGEN Takes the APS Bridge Program to the Next Level. APS News 27, 9 (2018) https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201810/igen.cfm
Powell, K. Higher education: On the lookout for true grit. Nature 504, 471–473 (2013) https://doi.org/10.1038/nj7480-471a
Rudolph, A.L., Holley-Bockelmann, K. & Posselt, J. PhD bridge programmes as engines for access, diversity and inclusion. Nature Astronomy 3, 1080–1085 (2019) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-019-0962-1
Stassun, K.G., Burger, A., Lange, S.E. The Fisk-Vanderbilt Masters-to-PhD Bridge Program: A Model for Broadening Participation of Underrepresented Groups in the Physical Sciences through Effective Partnerships with Minority-Serving Institutions. Journal of Geoscience Education, 58, 3, 135-144 (2010) https://doi.org/10.5408/1.3559648
Stassun K.G., Sturm, S., Holley-Bockelmann, K., Burger, A., Ernst, D.J., Webb, D. The Fisk-Vanderbilt Master's-to-Ph.D. Bridge Program: Recognizing, enlisting, and cultivating unrealized or unrecognized potential in underrepresented minority students. Am. J. Phys. 79, 4, 374-379 (2011) https://aapt.scitation.org/doi/10.1119/1.3546069
Stassun, K.G. The Fisk-Vanderbilt Masters-to-PhD Bridge Program: Broadening Participation of Underrepresented Minorities in the Physical Sciences. ACS Symposium Series, 1248, 97-106 (2017) https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/bk-2017-1248.ch006
“The Time is Now: Systemic Changes to Increase African Americans with Bachelor’s Degrees in Physics and Astronomy”, American Institute of Physics (2020)
Whittaker, J. A., and Montgomery, B.L. Cultivating Diversity and Competency in STEM: Challenges and Remedies for Removing Virtual Barriers to Constructing Diverse Higher Education Communities of Success. J Undergrad Neurosci Educ 11, 1, A44–A51 (2012) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3592737/