July 24, 2023
Bridge Programs Over Troubled Water
Rice University president Reginald DesRoches launched his career as a civil engineer–turned–higher ed administrator back in the early 1980s, when he joined a summer bridge program for students from underrepresented backgrounds before his freshman year at the University of California, Berkeley.
The program was made up of about 90 percent students of color, he said, and it helped him feel more at home in Berkeley’s largely white engineering program. He even replicated it decades later with the Rice Emerging Scholars Program, which he said has a similar demographic makeup to the old Berkeley one.
The program was made up of about 90 percent students of color, he said, and it helped him feel more at home in Berkeley’s largely white engineering program. He even replicated it decades later with the Rice Emerging Scholars Program, which he said has a similar demographic makeup to the old Berkeley one.