MBRS RISE Program at California State University San Marcos

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The CSU San Marcos RISE Program will increase the pool of racial and ethnic minority students who pursue research careers in the biomedical sciences. The proposed program has three Developmental Activities: Student, Faculty, and Institutional. Our Primary Measurable Objective is to place 90%of our RISE Scholars into graduate school. Our Undergraduate Student Developmental Plan has 5 goals: creating a Pre-RISE program to create a large, highly qualified recruitment pool; enhancing academic performance; enhancing communication skills, participation in biomedical research, and graduate school application. Each year, 25 Undergraduate RISE Scholars (URS) will participate in the program consisting of 5 RISE sophomores (from Pre-RISE), 10juniors (5 entering from community colleges) and 10 seniors- all chosen and retained using rigorous standards. URS will participate in a set of activities designed to make them competitive for admission to prestigious graduate schools, including participation in a challenging curriculum supported by a range of academic support services, research training, research seminars, and supervised original research leading to scientific publications. Our students will develop strong skills in critical thinking, problem solving, writing and oral communication, leadership, and teamwork. Finally, URS will participate as a cohort in a year-long set of activities designed to place them into graduate school and to track completion of their graduate degrees. The Graduate Student Developmental Plan has four goals: RISE graduate scholar recruitment; retention and enhancement of academic performance; participation in research; and application to graduate school. In years 1 and 2 our Graduate Program will select 6 Graduate RISE Scholars (GRS) and will increase to 8 in years 3 and 4. GRS will participate in a set of activities similar to those described for the URS and they will assume additional responsibilities as mentors and role models for the URS. Placement of URS and GRS into graduate school will be facilitated through our agreements with several institutions. The Faculty Developmental Activity has 1 goal: enhancement of student mentoring skills. The Institutional Developmental Activity will advocate for campus adoption and funding of successful RISE activities. Our Evaluation Plan provides measurable objectives and assessment criteria for each project goal using formative and summative methods. Counting graduates for 2003 and 2004, 63% (12/19) have gone on to graduate school. In addition, 8 current RISE Scholars have applied for fall 2005 graduate school admission and 7 (88%) have already been admitted increasing our placement record to 70% (19/27) -a clear pattern of increased success over the first 3 years of the project facilitated by rigorous evaluation. The national RISE Program's goal and the CSUSM strategic plan are in nice alignment. The regional minority population growth, the campus' commitment to diversity, the success of the current RISE Program, the supportive faculty, the experience of the program director, the existing highly coordinated MBRS SCORE, MARC and Bridges Programs, and new science buildings equipped with modern scientific instruments and powerful instructional resources collectively make CSUSM an ideal location to operate a successful RISE Program.