MARC Honors Undergraduate Research Training Program

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The goal of the proposed MARC U-STAR program is to further increase the number of qualified underrepresented undergraduates who continue their education at the Ph.D. level in the biomedical and behavioral sciences. The project will consist of activities that represent a coordinated program that includes undergraduate recruitment, extensive research experience, and graduate school preparation. These activities are centered around the College Honors Sequence, coupled with specific courses for the MARC trainees to prepare them for the rigors of postgraduate training. In the previous funding period we made significant progress in implementing a more stringent student recruitment and selection process to screen out candidates interested in pursuing careers in medicine or fields unrelated to biomedical research; increasing numbers of MARC trainees from City College are now entering and completing doctoral programs in the biomedical sciences. Core goals of our program remain student recruitment and selection, and advisement and preparation for graduate school. We will recruit students for placement into the laboratories of faculty in the departments of Biology, Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry & Biochemistry, Earth & Atmospheric Science, Physics, and Psychology; the pool of mentors also includes faculty from the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education. Students will be appointed for their final 2 years of undergraduate study and will engage in mentored independent research, have regular advising meetings with their mentor and the MARC program director and advisory committee, and will participate in professional development seminars. We will also take advantage of initiatives by the City University of New York to expand science infrastructure; for example there are now two new science buildings on the City College campus, trainees interested in working on projects in structural biology have access to state-of-the-art instrumentation for structural analyses of biomolecules at the New York Structural Biology Center on the CCNY campus, and trainees interested in cancer research are able to take advantage of opportunities created by City College's partnership with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The implementation of the new MARC U-STAR program will benefit top science students, both trainees as well as non-trainees, thereby meeting the goals of strengthening the capability of the college to train students in the sciences, and enhancing their research training experience at City College.