UC Merced Magazine | Volume XIX, Issue VII

(Continued from page 33) “In summer 2024, we increased the number of incoming Ph.D. students who participated in our Competitive Edge Program to an all-time high of 42,” Ghosh said. “We are equipping incoming graduate students with essential academic expectations and professional development opportunities, while emphasizing the cultivation of a strong and supportive peer network.” CESB employs a dual approach designed to provide incoming doctoral students with both foundational academic skills and specialized disciplinary expertise. During the six-week session, the Graduate Division holds professional development workshops that address universal aspects of doctoral success, including understanding program milestones, establishing productive mentoring relationships and developing strategies for work-life integration in graduate school. Complementing these core sessions, individual graduate programs deliver targeted technical training tailored to their specific requirements. is specialized instruction encompasses essential research competencies such as computational skills, advanced instrumentation techniques at the Imaging and Microscopy Facility, systematic approaches to literature review and scholarly writing practices. Taylor Fugere-Sousa, who graduated with her Ph.D. from UC Merced in December and is now a postdoctoral scholar, participated in CESB’s summer 2019-2020 cohort as the first Management of Complex Systemsgraduate student to attend the program. “It was helpful to learn the norms of grad school and know what questions to ask,” she said. “ ere were hard science and social science workshops. I am in a unique situation because I use social science methods in an engineering context; I did both sessions, and it opened my eyes to several types of research.” ‘Tremendous’ Help Fugere-Sousa got her bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley as a first-generation college student. She worked at UC Merced as a staff member for four years before she pursued her Master of Management degree and then Ph.D. “I hadn’t been directly involved in research during my time as an undergrad, so it was a good intro into the things that I would be doing later on,” she said.

Associate Graduate Dean and Professor Sayantani Ghosh, center, works with Taylor Fugere-Sousa, left, and Teddy Adams on professional development.

Participants also focus on writing and submitting graduate fellowships as part of the program. Fugere-Sousa remembered CESB mentor Melissa (Spence) Anisko, who shared her successful fellowship application with the cohort. “She gave us feedback on our essays and described how to frame our research journey and trajectory. She did a great job of explaining the broader impacts of her research,” she said, explaining that the experience helped her tremendously. “I submitted a National Science Foundation grant recently with a faculty member, and I wrote the broader impact section because of what she taught us.” Summer Bridge attracts a larger number of URG students every year. is is significant, as Ph.D. completion rates of URG students are lower than the campuswide average at UC Merced. Supporting this demographic is essential. Teddy Adams, a Ph.D. student in condensed matter physics, participated in the 2023-2024 CESB cohort a er graduating from California State University, Channel Islands. e program helped him ease into graduate studies at UC Merced.

Without Summer Bridge, it would have been really difficult to move here. — Teddy Adams

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