University of California, Santa Cruz, IMSD Program

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The goals of our IMSD program are to increase significantly the number of minority students who achieve the Ph.D. degree and to train students for careers in the sciences, as teachers, researchers in universities and the biotechnology industry or as health care professionals. Both graduate and undergraduate students participate in our program. We have three specific objectives. First, we have outlined a long-term plan to nearly double the number of IMSD participants who earn the Ph.D. Under the previous MBRS program we produced 20 Ph.D.s in the period 1988-1997. Our IMSD program began in 1998. We have set a target 36 Ph.D.s for the period 1998-2007. To meet that objective we propose to produce 14-15 Ph.D.s in the next four years. The second objective is to have a 95% graduation rate for all undergraduate participants. Furthermore we want to maintain our record of placing 95% of our graduates in graduate schools, professional Schools or in jobs in which they use their biology and chemistry training. The third objective is to increase the number of minority students who publish in journals and who make presentations at national scientific meetings. We wish to increase the number of papers and published abstracts by 40%. We propose to support 8 Ph.D. students and 15 undergraduates. The major elements of our program are: a) early outreach to students in their first and second year; b) selection of research students at the beginning of the third year; c) a novel summer training course; d) undergraduate research positions in faculty labs; e) the graduate program; f) a monthly student research seminar; and g) the program support office.