Southwestern College (SWC) and San Diego State University (SDSU) are both designated Hispanic-serving institutions serving the San Diego region. SDSU is the top transfer destination for SWC students, and SWC is one of SDSU’s three major sources of transfer students. For many students, SDSU is the only transfer option due to geographical and financial limitations. However, SDSU only admits around 20% of their transfer applicants, making the process highly competitive. Mentored Pathways from Community College to Graduate School and Chemistry Careers (the Mentored Pathways Program) aims to streamline this process via a large (~$5 million) grant through NSF’s Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) program. The long-term goal of this project is to determine best practices to increase student success via mentoring and other interventions. As such, the grant supports chemistry and biochemistry students in their academic careers starting at SWC and continuing through SDSU for baccalaureate and graduate degrees. Support is provided to students in the form of scholarships and mentoring both for academics and undergraduate research.<br/><br/>The first two years of Mentored Pathways faced the unexpected challenges of a global pandemic and sudden switch to a remote modality. As schools and institutions began to cancel events, we searched for ways to continue offering enrichment to our students. One of the biggest challenges of the remote transition was building a community with our scholars. Large Zoom meetings do not allow individuals to get to know each other and fostering strong mentoring relationships is difficult when we cannot take students for coffee and a chat.<br/><br/>Here we present our approach to dealing with this unprecedented pandemic. We will share the lessons learned from our remote transition, including the interventions and activities that we found effective at building community, as well as those that we found to be ineffective.

Lessons learned from the transition to on-line: Adapting to Covid-19 in the S-STEM mentored pathways from community college to graduate school and chemistry careers program

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.