Outreach Core

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Despite some recent progress, recruiting underrepresented minority students into graduate, science-based, research programs remains challenging; this applies to alcohol research training as well as other areas of health research. In an effort to strengthen the pipeline of underrepresented minority (as well as nonminority) students, we propose to develop and implement a two-week, intensive summer program for promising minority and nonminority undergraduates, the Alcohol Research Training Summer School (ARTSS). The ARTSS will provide a broad, high quality, and stimulating introduction to alcohol research, drawing upon a national pool of visiting faculty members (drawn from the training directors of NIAAA predoctoral training programs). Specifically, the ARTSS will, on an annual basis, offer a residential summer program consisting of broad overview of basic and applied topics in biomedical and psychosocial research areas through a series of didactic lectures and supplemental talks and structured learning activities. The ensemble of activities planned is intended to excite students about research careers in alcohol, provide encouragement and support for pursuing such a career, and provide needed guidance and opportunites to enhance success. Each year, 25 appropriately qualified undergraduate students (half drawn from under-represented minority groups) will attend the two-week session on the campus of Washington University School of Medicine. A number of activities designed to reinforce the "on campus," two-week will take place over the following year. These include program staff maintaining contact with alumni through follow-up contacts, hosting an alumni "reunion" at the annual Samuel B. Guze symposium on alcoholism (with students encouraged to participate in poster sessions and discussion groups in addition to attending the lecture series), and facilitating research internships (at students' home institutions and the labs of training faculty in NIAAA-funded, predoctoral research training programs). Over the course of the funding cycle, process and (proximal and intermediate) outcome evaluations will take place in order to maintain a feedback system for continuing quality improvement. The ARTSS (and related program elements) are viewed as a wonderful opportunity to make novel use of both the multidiscipinary resources of the MARC and its faculty as well as an efficient use of the infrastructure developed as part of the network of NIAAA predoctoral research training grants.