The Bridges to the Baccalaureate Degree Program is designed to build upon the established and recently developed institutional and programmatic relationships between Essex County College (ECC) and the Newark campus of Rutgers, The State University. In order to increase significantly the number of underrepresented minority students at Essex who choose to enter and succeed in pursuing careers in biomedical research, a number of new initiatives between the two institutions will be implemented that will have a direct and salutatory impact on currently enrolled ECC students and will ensure that the future cohorts of ECC students will benefit from the long-term faculty and institutional developments incorporated in this project. Specifically, the bridges program will: (1) increase the awareness of current ECC students, both science majors and undeclared majors, of the career opportunities in academia and in industry for researchers in the biomedical fields by establishing a series of lectures, seminars, and career day opportunities drawing noted Rutgers and industry scientists to ECC; (2) establish science clubs at ECC, drawing upon and modeling on the successful undergraduate science clubs at Rutgers, Newark; (3) invite ECC students and their faculty to attend the regularly scheduled seminar programs at Rutgers, which are designed especially for undeclared but potential science majors and minority students under the auspices of Rutgers, Newark's MBRS Program and its recently established Howard Hughes Medical Institute Initiative for Undergraduate Science; and (4) provide summer laboratory research experiences at Rutgers for selected Essex biology and chemistry majors.
