SIF182 Summer Advancement

Project Manager: Rachel Most and Elizabeth Ozment

Approved: Summer 2021

The purpose of this award is to facilitate the transition of low-income, first-generation, and minority students from Piedmont Virginia Community College to UVA. This funding is repurposed from the SIF156 Bridges award.

Project Dates: 02/01/2022-01/31/2025

Total Funding: $328,530

Executive Summary:

The Summer Advancement Program aids the University of Virginia’s (UVA) continued commitment to fostering a welcoming and inclusive academic environment that enhances the achievements of minority, first-generation and low-income transfer students from Piedmont Virginia Community College (PVCC). This proposal is in direct response to President Ryan’s 2030 Strategic Plan to cultivate the most vibrant community in higher education by being a strong partner with and good neighbor to the Charlottesville region (SPLAN 2019), with recognition that the University must support transfer student pathways if it wishes to recruit and retain exceptional under-represented students in our programs. We will not be able to close achievement gaps, especially in the sciences, among low-income, first-generation, and minority students without addressing attrition rates among transfer students. Expanding early opportunities for community college transfer students to form relationships with peers and faculty in the classroom will nurture a more welcoming environment and address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Three basic goals of this program are to:

• Support the transfer pathway from PVCC to UVA as an affordable and excellent education for under-represented Virginians by accelerating student transitions into upper-division coursework.1

• Expedite major prerequisite completion among under-represented students who enter as transfer students from PVCC through high-impact instructional practices.

• Expand early opportunities for entering transfer students to form advising and mentoring relationships with peers, and faculty.

Progress:

The Summer Advancement Program is an academic bridge program for admitted community college transfer students from Piedmont Virginia Community College. The program accelerates the 2-year college to 4-year university academic and social transition and addresses issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion by expanding early opportunities for community college transfer students to form relationships with peers and faculty in the classroom while enrolled in summer session coursework that fulfills general education requirements and major prerequisites. The Summer Advancement Program aids the University of Virginia’s (UVA) continued commitment to fostering a welcoming and inclusive academic environment that enhances the achievements of minority, first-generation and low-income transfer students from Piedmont Virginia Community College (PVCC). In doing so, this project responds to the priorities outlined in President Ryan’s 2030 Strategic Plan to cultivate the most vibrant community in higher education by being a strong partner with and good neighbor to the Charlottesville region, with recognition that the University must support transfer student pathways if it wishes to recruit and retain exceptional under-represented students in our programs.

Sixteen students participated in the 2022 Summer Advancement Program, each completing 4.00-6.00 credits of summer session coursework, and their cohort was quite diverse in identity and academic interest. This cohort consisted of 80% third-year transfers, 62% men, 25% first-generation college students, and 15% military veterans, with 37% of students identifying as Black or Latinx, and 18% of students planning to attend either medical school or law school in the future. Their summer enrollment distributed widely across natural science, social science, and humanities departments to satisfy the prerequisites for their intended majors. The most popular anticipated academic majors among this cohort were biology, psychology, and sociology. Final grades were strong among program participants with 75% of participants earning a final grade of A in one or more summer session classes. This cohort earned an average summer GPA of 3.40 and an average cumulative GPA of 3.45 during their first year in residence at UVA, with 62% of participants successfully declaring their intended majors by January 2023. The 2022 Summer Advancement Program produced similar academic results as the 2019 pilot program, and the summer grades earned by both cohorts proved to be a strong predictor of how the students fare academically within their chosen majors for the remainder of their degree.