Graduate school can be isolating, with long days in the lab, money worries, and few people to commiserate with beyond one’s own department. Yet one longtime fellowship program at UC Santa Barbara has, since 2008, offered an antidote. Bridge to the Doctorate (BD) is an NSF-funded doctoral fellowship enrichment program that offers twelve two-year fellowships to incoming PhD students in STEM fields. Along with a $32,000 stipend, graduate students receive comprehensive mentorship, professional development, and interdisciplinary community support that can smooth the path through their time at the university and into their future careers. 

“Graduate school can be a struggle for anyone in STEM, between finding funding and finding a community that can support you both in and outside the lab," said BD co-principal investigator (PI) Glenn Beltz, who is also a mechanical engineering professor and associate dean of Undergraduate Studies in The Robert Mehrabian College of Engineering. "This program provides both financial and career support — and has allowed our fellows to be successful in their fields as a result." 

The BD program has rotated among the UC campuses. UC Santa Barbara is the first UC campus to have received the award three times — in 2008, 2017, and 2024. In fall 2025, five new fellows joined the program to complete the current fellowship cohort, which includes graduate students from chemical engineering, materials, chemistry and biochemistry, statistics, the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, and molecular, cellular, and developmental biology.   

All told, UCSB has awarded 36 of the 142 fellowships given in the UC system, said Arica Lubin, associate director of research and training programs at the Center for Science & Engineering Partnerships (CSEP) and a co-PI of the BD program. Over the course of nearly two decades at UCSB, the fellowship program has retained all of its fellows, with 83 percent receiving their PhDs in STEM fields — a rate that is about 20 percent higher than the campus average for STEM PhD students with similar backgrounds — and 17 percent receiving their masters. So far, 32 percent of the PhD graduates have gone on to take academic positions, including as postdoctoral researchers, while 68 percent have taken industry positions.

The program draws from students who have participated, as undergraduates, in the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program, which has been funding underrepresented STEM students since 1991. BD faculty mentors and departments nominate eligible students, the program directors interview candidates, and then they award the fellowship.

Once they arrive, each fellow has an extensive, wraparound mentoring network that includes their BD faculty member and a senior graduate student in their department who serves as a peer mentor, as well as their research advisor. Fellows in the cohort convene several times each quarter for a professional development meeting and a social gathering, where students celebrate milestones from publishing papers to making a first solo presentation to their lab group.

“The biggest challenge in grad school, in my opinion, is that often times you get caught in your small little bubble,” said Javier Read de Alaniz, a chemistry and biochemistry professor who is the BD program director and director of the National Science Foundation Biomaterials, Polymers and Advanced Constructs from Integrated Chemistry Materials Innovation Platform (BioPACIFIC MIP). He said that the cohort meetups allow fellows to expand their networks across campus. “Almost all other professional-development programs are specific to one discipline,” he said. Having a place where chemical engineers and materials scientists can connect with statisticians and environmental scientists, he added, “makes this program unique.”  

These connections continue after graduation, as BD alumni become mentors to the current students. “The alumni mentoring network is growing, and they are really able to encourage new, up-and-coming scientists,” Lubin said.

Boosting Student Success

Often, the fellows are first-generation students whose backgrounds provide them with fewer role models in their fields of study. “We’ve had students from across the country from so many different backgrounds in terms of their undergraduate institutions, scientific disciplines, and life experiences,” Lubin said. “They provide so much diversity of perspective for each other, and for the campus as a whole.”

Third-year materials PhD student Magdalena Ravello appreciates the chance to meet and interact with students from multiple departments. “Having that kind of support has been really nice,” Ravello said. “We talk about lab conflicts together, and the different struggles people are facing. And Javier and Arica are always kind and generous with their time, and willing to help out if you have something you want to talk through with them.”

Ravello first heard about the program when she came for her campus visit in 2023. As an undergraduate at Georgia Tech, she had participated in the LSAMP program. Ravello, who is co-advised by materials professor Rafaële Clément and mechanical engineering and materials professor Jeff Sakamoto, said that she didn’t realize that participating in the undergraduate program “would allow me to not worry about funding for two years of my PhD. It made me think that you should always look out for these opportunities when you’re applying to grad school.”

BD alum Marcela Areyano (Ph.D. ‘21), now a process integration engineer at Lockheed Martin, said that the fellowship’s funding provided greater autonomy and flexibility. “Before the fellowship, I had to balance teaching responsibilities with my research, and that was becoming increasingly difficult,” she said. “Removing the financial stress allowed me to fully focus on my work and develop my technical skills, which ultimately made me more successful.”

Funding has become increasingly important for many graduate students in the current research climate, said Matteo Garcia-Ortiz, a third-year chemical engineering PhD student. But the personal encouragement the program offers is just as meaningful. “There was a lot of really strong imposter syndrome when I started, and Javier and Arica gave me so much emotional support,” he said. “They made me feel like I had somebody on my team that really wanted me here.”

Supporting the Community

In addition to becoming part of the community of fellows, students often emerge as leaders on campus, extending the ripple effects of the program to the broader STEM campus community, said M. Ofelia Aguirre Paden, the director of CSEP, who was instrumental in bringing the program to UCSB in 2008. For example, she said, Areyano started the Graduate UCSB chapter of the Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) in 2016, creating a supportive community for underrepresented students on campus. “The impact has really moved beyond the BD students,” Paden said. 

In May 2025, NSF announced the end of the LSAMP program, a decision that may also lead to the discontinuation of the BD fellowship program. However, the program’s impact will endure, as many of the community-building strategies piloted by the BD team have been adopted by other graduate mentorship programs across campus, Lubin said.

Its students will continue to make an impact, too. “The BD has served as an award that develops campus leaders who then advocate for other STEM students at UCSB and more broadly as they progress in their careers,” Paden said. “That’s one of the legacies of this program.”

Because of the NSF BD program, said program director Read de Alaniz, “UCSB is in a unique position to continue to make an impact on students across all fields of STEM. We are committed to working with campus partners and the broader community to ensure that this impact will support future generations of STEM graduate students for years to come.”