Phase II of BUILDing SCHOLARS

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Contact PD/PI: Echegoyen, Lourdes PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT – OVERALL COMPONENT The University at Texas at El Paso (UTEP) proposes to continue to strengthen, maintain, institutionalize and/or disseminate BUILDing SCHOLARS (Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity: Southwest Consortium of Health-Oriented education Leaders and Research Scholars) partnerships and interventions developed in the phase I award period. The overall goal in phase II is to enhance institutional and faculty capacities to support, sustain, and disseminate innovative undergraduate research training and mentoring activities for students in the US Southwest region, the majority of whom come from underrepresented groups, and to contribute to the future diversification of the NIH funded workforce. The center aims to: (1) continue to strengthen, support, and maintain BUILD Research and Pipeline Institution partnerships; (2) continue to strengthen, support, maintain, and institutionalize all activities for student recruitment, research training and mentoring; (3) continue to strengthen, support, maintain, and institutionalize professional development activities for participating faculty; (4) continue the close collaboration between the BUILDing SCHOLARS site evaluation team and the Coordination and Evaluation Center (CEC); (5) ensure that institutional leaders/administrators keep their commitment to sustain successful and impactful BUILD interventions; and (6) develop and implement innovative strategies for the dissemination of results and the most successful and impactful BUILD interventions. A robust plan for institutionalization of the BUILDing SCHOLARS program and associated interventions will be implemented; leading to the long term sustainability of the program including support for undergraduate trainees on full scholarships every year after the funding period. The activities are innovative because of the trans-disciplinary emphasis, the focus on early interventions, the use of an assets bundling approach to overcoming educational and research training barriers, and the expansion of impacts through implementation of a research driven curriculum and a community of practice. These innovations are allowing the center to scale-up undergraduate research training and contribute directly to the diversification of the NIH- funded workforce. This proposal is significant because it takes a regional approach to sustaining a multi- institutional series of programs and activities that meet the needs of underrepresented groups concentrated in the US Southwest on their path to becoming biomedical researchers. Page 116 Project Summary/Abstract Contact PD/PI: Echegoyen, Lourdes