Bridge to the Doctorate: Wisconsin Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation

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The Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program assists universities and colleges in diversifying the STEM workforce through the development of highly competitive students from groups historically underrepresented in STEM disciplines: African-Americans, Alaska Natives, American Indians, Hispanic Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Native Pacific Islanders. The goal of the LSAMP Bridge to the Doctorate (BD) Activity is to increase the quantity and quality of STEM graduate students from underrepresented populations, with emphasis on Ph.D. matriculation and completion. BD programs implemented in the nation's institutions of higher education contribute to addressing one of the objectives in NSF's 2014-2018 Strategic Plan, namely to "integrate education and research to support development of a diverse STEM workforce with cutting-edge capabilities." Since national security and economic vitality of the United States require a highly trained domestic STEM workforce, institutions engaged in the most advanced levels of research and innovation must do their part to train tomorrow's leaders in STEM. The Wisconsin LSAMP BD (WiscAMP-BD) builds on the growing diversity of undergraduate students who are completing their Baccalaureate degrees in STEM. The long-term outcome of the WiscAMP-BD effort will be to increase the diversity of leaders throughout academic science and engineering. It is the academic leaders who direct the nation's research agenda, set public policy, establish international collaborations with global impact, and train the scientific workforce.The WiscAMP-BD program has the following objectives:1) To recruit and enroll a cohort of twelve BD Fellows into any of the 54 STEM doctoral programs at UW-Madison;2) To pair each of the students who are strong candidates for graduate study and are underrepresented in STEM with faculty mentors who are engaged in cutting-edge research and committed to mentoring students from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups; and3) To establish a community of practice for WiscAMP-BD Fellows to support the development of eight core competencies and their persistence to the STEM doctoral degree.These efforts will increase the diversity of STEM academic leadership and contribute to the growing literature on broadening participation in STEM at the graduate and post-graduate level.