Preparing STEM Students for Success in Physics Through an Intensive Summer Program

Many community college students have low levels of preparation for college-level work, in general, and for physics, in particular. Consequently, they perform poorly in college-level physics courses, and shortly, get discouraged from pursuing a science or engineering major despite their high levels of interest in such majors. Although many remedial math classes are offered for students who are underprepared for math courses, there are no specific remedial physics classes available for students to prepare them for their college-level physics courses. As a result, students with low or no physics background continue performing poorly in their physics courses. Furthermore, these students suffer from poor or lack of study skills as well as lack of awareness of useful science and physics educational resources; therefore many of the students rely heavily on other students or Internet resources such as chegg.com or yahoo answers to find solutions to their homework problems without understanding the solutions. In order to prepare these students for transfer-level physics courses, Cañada College, a federally designated Hispanic-serving institution in the Bay Area, developed and implemented an intensive physics review program. Summer Physics Jam is a four-week, self-paced program designed to familiarize students with college-level physics topics and valuable physics educational resources. Physics Jam was offered for the first time at Cañada College in Summer 2012, and a comparison of preand post-program surveys show a significant improvement in students understanding of physics. Furthermore, the percentage of students who reported anxiety about studying physics dropped from 61% to 42%. However, an accurate assessment will be done by comparing the rate of success among physics jam participants to nonparticipants at the end of their first semester physics course.