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It is the last day of class for the Health Sciences Summer Bridge Program at Metropolitan Community College - Penn Valley. As the final project, each of the students enrolled must present to a packed room of supportive family members, college faculty and staff, and community supporters. They talk confidently, yet often through tears, about what the Summer Bridge experience has meant to them.
“I refuse to repeat the mistakes of my family,” says one.
“I’ve learned how to learn,” says another.
“I now know I can be successful in college,” says yet another.
The confident presenters are a different group of young people than the ones who walked into the classroom six weeks ago. “They were scared, and really unsure of themselves,” said Zola Gordy, retention coordinator for MCC-Penn Valley, and co-director of the Health Sciences Summer Bridge Program. “It is amazing to see the transformation.”
The Health Sciences Summer Bridge Program is the result of a newly developed partnership between the Kansas City, Missouri School District, the Metropolitan Community College-Penn Valley, and PREP-KC. The partnership focuses on using the Health Sciences Small Learning Communities in the Achievement First high schools as the framework for creating a pipeline of high school students who are interested in pursuing Nursing and Allied Health degrees at MCC-Penn Valley. The objectives of the partnership are to identify students with a strong interest in nursing and allied health and provide those students with additional supports and learning experiences so they are prepared to succeed in community college classes.
“In my first three semesters here, I noticed we had no students of color graduating from our nursing program,” said Bernard Franklin, MCC-Penn Valley President. Franklin realized they had to make a significant change in the way Penn Valley attracted students, especially students of color.
Finding students of color was no problem. Penn Valley is in the heart of Kansas City’s urban core, and so is the Kansas City, Missouri School District, where 83 percent of students are non-white.
“We were in their backyard, but as we looked at our data, we realized we weren’t attracting graduates from the KCMO schools,” said Gordy.
And even students who were interested didn’t know what it took to go to college.
A New Partnership (and Pathway) Emerges
PREP-KC saw an opportunity for collaboration and growth by fostering a partnership between the KCMSD Health Sciences SLCs and the Nursing and Allied Health programs at Penn Valley. From the outset, there was clear promise in connecting these two entities around the common goal of better preparing Kansas City’s students for post-secondary education. Working closely with the Health Sciences Small Learning Communities in the KCMSD’s Achievement First high schools, PREP-KC was able to design and facilitate a unique set of meetings between district teachers and MCC-Penn Valley faculty and staff.
A Health Sciences Committee was formed, comprised of teachers from the KCMSD Health Sciences SLCs, faculty from Penn Valley’s Nursing & Allied Health programs, and PREP-KC staff. As the committee developed trust, they found common ground.
“I now have people at Penn Valley I can call to help me with specific issues that my students may have,” said health teacher Pam Sanders. “And I’ve met with these people, and I know their names.”
The committee focused their work on developing experiences for students and teachers to come onto the Penn Valley campus to learn more about health science careers and degree programs. Working together, the committee created mini-classes on the Penn Valley campus where almost 400 KCMSD students were introduced to the range of Health Science degree options available at Penn Valley.
“Without Summer Bridge, I probably never would have filled out the application, and I sure wouldn’t be taking classes this fall.”
-- Megan Howard
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Building a Bridge
The committee’s work would certainly bring change over time, but everyone agreed that something had to be put in place immediately to help graduating seniors. Drawing from the pool of interested students who attended the mini-classes, a select group of 12 students were invited to participate in a pilot Health Science Summer Bridge Program in June 2007. Megan Howard was among the 12 students who attended that first day.
“I was still on the fence, even that first day of class,” said Howard. “Without Summer Bridge, I probably never would have filled out the application, and I sure wouldn’t be taking classes this fall.”
The six-week Summer Bridge Program focused on study skills and career exploration.
Gordy knew these were the key skills students needed to be prepared for their first semester.
“The best college retention tool is helping students successfully transition from high school.”
Students completing the program earned four college credit hours. Scholarships from PREP-KC covered the cost of tuition and textbooks. But perhaps even more importantly, students who completed the program left with tools to help them reach their academic, professional, and personal goals.
“I saw parts of myself I’ve never really seen before,” said Howard. “If you get out all the stuff that you’re bad at, you don’t have to be ashamed of it and you can ask for help.”
As the fall semester began, 10 of the 11 students who completed the Summer Bridge Program were enrolled at Penn Valley, including Megan. She and her Summer Bridge peers stopped by the Learning Center in the fall on their first day of community college to visit Gordy, and to introduce their friends who had not been part of the Summer Bridge.
“The reach of this Summer Bridge Program is extending well beyond the 12 students who were in the classroom,” said Gordy.
Advancing the Partnership
The Health Sciences Committee is working this year to continue the health sciences mini-classes and strengthen the Summer Bridge program. They hosted their 2nd Annual Health Science Career Expo in October 2007 and have plans in place to begin recruiting the next class of Summer Bridge students.
Megan is already giving back to the Kansas City community as a Summer Bridge graduate. She speaks regularly to student and faculty groups about the impact of her Summer Bridge experience, and she is considering coming back to next year’s bridge program-this time as a mentor and coach.
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