Integrating Mentorship and Discovery Experiences to Support an Arc of Discovery for Chemistry and CBE Transfer Students
Our goal is to transform the experiences of transfer students within the College of Chemistry so that they are guided to develop and engage in creative, discovery experiences spanning across the two years that they are enrolled at UC Berkeley. We will create a framework that supports students to build learning and professional relationships with a cohort of peers and graduate student and faculty mentors in order to provide advice and support in early courses, become fully integrated into the College of Chemistry community, facilitate early access to undergraduate research and internship programs, and provide programming to support career goals. At the core of both Chemistry and CBE undergraduate programs is a recognition that research and engineering design are the embodiment of creative expression. We seek to accelerate and deepen the development of creative agency for our transfer students through mentoring activities and student reflections that will form a scaffold for students to identify, connect with, become immersed in, and ultimately culminate a meaningful discovery experience. Although we recognize research and design as the core discovery activities of our disciplines, we will encourage and support students to follow their passions and interests to design their own Discovery Arc, including internships and outreach programs. We expect to see much higher numbers of transfer students being competitive in the top positions in the post-graduate market, including both PhD programs and industrial positions. The diversity our transfer students bring to UC Berkeley will thereby blossom beyond their time on campus, into the graduate, postdoctoral, and professional ranks. As we cement a solid reputation for creating a culture of community and supporting students from diverse backgrounds to succeed at UC Berkeley and beyond, we will attract an increasingly diverse group of students.
