Effectiveness of a summer bridge program at McLennan Community College

McLennan Community College (MCC) created a developmental summer bridge program in an effort to increase students’ Texas Success Initiative (TSI) exam scores and persistence in postsecondary education, decrease their developmental course sequences, and prepare students for college level coursework. In this quantitative research study, student performance data were collected from 2014-2016 summer bridge program participants to examine the relationship between participation in the MCC summer bridge program and selected student outcomes by comparison to a matched group of students who did not participate in the program. The research questions addressed in this study were as follows: To what extent did participation in a summer bridge program improve participants’ TSI scores? To what extent was participation in a summer bridge program related to developmental education placement results? To what extent did the average number of credit hours accumulated differ between students who participated in a summer bridge program and those in a comparison group that did not?