The Bridges to the Baccalaureate Program at San Diego Mesa College is a science education plan designed to support the success of community college students from underrepresented groups or populations affected by health disparities, who plan to transfer and earn a bachelor's degree in biomedical, behavioral or related sciences.
The program is funded by National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NCMHD). The goals of the program are to:
- increase the overall transfer admission rate of underrepresented minorities majoring in the biomedical or behavioral sciences by ten percent per year, and
- transfer at least seventy percent of the Bridges students to a four-year university, and
- ensure that seventy-five percent of Bridges students will earn a bachelor's degree in the biomedical or behavioral sciences.
Several activities have been designed to support these goals, however the primary component of the program is an eight-week, fulltime summer internship at our partner institution, University of California, San Diego (UCSD).