Cal-Bridge: Engaging Underrepresented Students in Physics and Astronomy

We describe the Cal-Bridge program, which has the mission of increasing participation of groups traditionally underrepresented in physics and astronomy through scholarships, significant mentoring, professional development, and summer research opportunities, creating a national impact on their numbers successfully pursuing a PhD in the field. Now in its fifth year, the Cal-Bridge program is a CSU-UC Bridge program comprised of physics and astronomy faculty from 9 University of California (UC), 16 California State University (CSU), and more than 30 California Community College (CCC) campuses throughout California. Cal-Bridge provides mentoring and professional development experiences over the last two years of undergraduate and first year of graduate school to students from this diverse network of higher education institutions. Cal-Bridge Scholars benefit from substantial financial support, intensive, joint mentoring by CSU and UC faculty, professional development workshops, and exposure to research opportunities at the participating UC campuses. In addition, they are given summer research opportunities through the Cal-Bridge summer research program (formerly known as CAMPARE). A subset of CAMPARE scholars participate in a program called CHAMP (CAMPARE-HERA Astronomy Minority Partnership) in collaboration with the HERA radio telescope consortium. In the first five years, 59 Cal-Bridge Scholars have been selected, including 34 Latinos, 7 African-Americans and 25 women (15 of the 25 women are from underrepresented minority groups). Forty-four (44) of the 59 Cal-Bridge Scholars are first-generation college students. In the first 4 years, 27 of 34 Cal-Bridge Scholars have begun or will be attending PhD programs in physics or astronomy at top PhD programs nationally. The others are attending Master's-to-PhD Bridge programs, Master's Programs in physics or astronomy, or in one case, teaching high school physics. Five (5) scholars have won NSF Graduate Research Fellowships and three more received an Honorable Mention in the first 3 years of the program. Funding for these programs is provided by NSF-DUE SSTEM Grants #1356133 and #1741863, NSF-AST PAARE Grant #1559559, and NSF AST MSIP Grant #1564352.