RESEARCH SUPPORT FOR BIOMEDICAL CAREERS AT CCNY

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DESCRIPTION (Adapted from Application): City College (CCNY), located in Harlem, is part of the City University of New York (CUNY) system of 19 senior and community colleges. It consists of a college of liberal arts and sciences and several professional schools (engineering, medicine, and education). Enrollment at CCNY is over 11,300 and is drawn from a region of significant racial and ethnic diversity, with over 70 percent African-American or Hispanic-American students, many of whom are the first in their families to attend college. A similar distribution is seen in the division of science, where 70 percent of the 950 enrolled undergraduates are from the same underrepresented groups. The university has a number of resources to support the broad research environment, the newest of which is the New York Structural Biology Center, a consortium of 10 medical and research universities in New York City. This application requests support to continue the student development component of the MBRS Associate Investigator (AI) program to a RISE program. A MBRS SCORE program was established in 1999 to support a number of faculty research projects that are linked to the activities proposed here by providing research opportunities for RISE students. The MBRS program will continue to be based in the Division of Science and will involve faculty in biology, biomedical education, chemistry, and physics. All participating departments offer graduate degrees, including the Ph.D. The MBRS program at the CCNY has enjoyed success during the last 16 years training 29 students from underrepresented minority groups who went on to biomedical research at the Ph.D. level, with 16 trained in the last four years. The long term objective of the RISE program is to further increase the number of qualified undergraduates who continue their education and training at the Ph.D. level, and to increase the number of graduate students completing the Ph.D. program at the City College. The goals will be met through the refinement of the current successful student research program, coupled with new course development and a series of proactive student support services. Other efforts include an assertive faculty-advising program for entering students. These efforts have resulted in major improvements in student retention and improved grades in the lower division sciences that will enlarge the pool of MBRS eligible students.