Targeted Infusion Project: Undergraduate Neuroscience Education To Engage Diverse Students in STEM and Prepare Them for Graduate School and STEM Careers

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The Historically Black Colleges and Universities Undergraduate Program (HBCU-UP) through Targeted Infusion Projects supports the development, implementation, and study of evidence-based innovative models and approaches for improving the preparation and success of HBCU undergraduate students so that they may pursue science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) graduate programs and/or careers. The project at Delaware State University seeks to strengthen the university's ability to recruit, retain, and graduate underrepresented students in STEM by adding a Neuroscience minor to the existing degree programs. The goals and scope of this project are to leverage the current interest in neuroscience among biology majors, expand interest in neuroscience to non-biology majors, increase the number of students participating in neuroscience courses at the undergraduate level, and improve the placement rates of graduating seniors from both biology and non-biology majors into STEM graduate programs or the STEM workforce. To achieve these goals, this project will introduce 2 new courses: “Introduction to Neuroscience” at the sophomore level aimed to cover the basic concepts in Neuroscience, and the Research-focused “Introduction to Neurophysiology” at the Senior level, which will cover the basic concepts of electrophysiology, a technique to study the function of ion channels, proteins that control neuronal excitability. The evaluation plan includes a study on the trajectories of students majoring in both biology and other STEM subjects with a minor/concentration in Neuroscience to identify obstacles that students face during degree completion and modify the program accordingly to improve retention and minor/concentration completion rates.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.