Now a junior and a joint physics and math major who still has a 4.0 GPA, Corso admits, "If I hadn't done the summer bridge program it would have been more like hitting a brick wall instead of crossing a bridge."

Part of the challenge in encouraging freshmen to consider STEM is finding a research project at their skill level yet applicable to the real world of science, says HHMI professor Graham F. Hatfull, a biologist at the University of Pittsburgh. In that spirit, he established the PHIRE program (phage hunters integrating research and education), in which high school juniors and seniors as well as undergraduates explore the basics of biology by conducting experiments at the scientific frontier. A popular option is to have the students go "phage hunting"; they isolate previously undiscovered bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria), extract the DNA, and uncover the genomic secrets.

Phage hunting has suited the young students' technical skills so well that two science papers, one in Cell and the other in PLoS Genetics, have resulted from the now four-year-old program.

PHIRE precollege students typically study during the summer, but they also have the opportunity to work in the lab during the school year. "Instead of an experiment that's done tens of hundreds of times by high school students, they get to be a part of something larger because they are adding data to a real science project," says program assistant coordinator Deborah Jacobs-Sera. "It's very cool when the students really like it. At first they come in every other week, but before long it's every other day."

Andrew Hryckowian began in PHIRE as a high school junior and was one of the students the program turned on to science. "Up until then I kind of thought science was all just textbooks," he says. Now a sophomore and microbiology major at Pitt, he continues to work in Hatfull's lab and plans to get a Ph.D. in life sciences.

Bridge programs give students a boost socially as well as academically. "Before college, I was really terrified of what it was going to be," says Hufsa Ahmad, a freshman at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. "In new situations, I'm not as outgoing as I could be." But in the summer after high school graduation, she entered her college's bridge program, and its team-building experiences and math and biology minicourses infused her with the confidence she needed. Ahmad is now class president and wants "to major in everything."

		Incoming community college students who attend the bridge program at Miami-Dade College are offered a deal: If they take science classes, complete a research project, and do well in both, after graduation from Miami Dade they will receive a full scholarship to the University of Miami (UM). Director Michael Gaines explains that the program is interested in students without the financial means to go to UM and who are out of scholarship reach because of low SAT scores. So he looks at each student's high school GPA and whether he or she has received a grade of B or higher in chemistry. Of the 94 percent who excel in the bridge program, many ultimately attend UM. Some students, like Yelina Alvarez, however, look further. When she graduated from Miami Dade, Alvarez moved on to Stanford University. And she didn't stop there: she now is enrolled in an M.D./Ph.D. program at New York University. Says Alvarez: The program "gave me the foundation for what I am today." —J.R.

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