MARC Undergraduate Student Training in Academic Research at Queens College

描述（由申请人提供）：我们建议加强和优化四年前在皇后学院成功启动的MARC项目。皇后学院是全国最大的城市大学之一的高级学院，坐落在非常多样化的皇后区。我们开发了一个项目，通过强调动手实验室经验和对学生的密切监督和建议，根据追求或计划从事生物医学研究的学生比例，该项目已被证明是成功的。基于对我们成果的持续评估，我们修改了我们最初的目标和策略，以实现我们可衡量的目标的最佳成功。我们建议继续优化：1)我们的研究基础研讨会；2)我们的研究经验，包括在研究型大学的一个夏天；3)我们的密集咨询和监测系统；4)我们坚持学生参加研究讨论会，并在同龄人面前做报告；5)培养MARC学生和其他研究生之间的互动。到目前为止，我们成功的一个反映是皇后学院的其他项目采用了我们的创新，作为海报日和评估。在我们的第二个五年周期中，我们计划通过扩大广告和推广项目以及非常成功的“初学者科学”课程，提高我们项目的知名度，从而扩大我们吸引的学生群体的规模。我们还将通过一项新的大学补贴，扩大我们的“卓越辅导”计划，并建立MARC-pre-MARC伙伴制度，增加对pre-MARC学生的财政激励。后一项倡议将使pre-MARC学生更快地进入实验室，将为他们提供同伴支持，并将为我们的MARC学生提供指导经验。在我们提议的第二个周期中，我们将保持并扩大我们广泛的评估和文档工作，以使我们能够判断我们的项目在招聘和学生成果方面的影响，以及我们对学院的整体影响。我们的第一个四年是成功的，在学生安置方面，在会议上获奖，论文发表或准备，以及对学院和部门的影响。利用结果评估的结果，我们计划继续优化我们的培训计划，以及它对我们学院和周围社区的影响。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): We propose to enhance and optimize the MARC program that we successfully launched at Queens College 4 years ago. Queens College is a senior college of one of the largest urban universities in the country and is situated in the remarkably diverse borough of Queens. We have developed a program that, through emphasis on hands-on laboratory experience and close supervision and advisement of students, has proven successful based on the proportion of students pursuing or planning to pursue careers in biomedical research. Based on an ongoing assessment of our outcomes, we have modified our initial goals and tactics to achieve optimal success in achieving our measurable objectives. We propose to continue to optimize 1) our workshops on research basics, 2) our hands on research experience, including one summer at a Research I University; 3) our intensive advisement and monitoring system; 4) our insistence that students attend research colloquia and make presentations in front of their peers; and 5) our fostering of interaction between MARC students and other research students. One reflection of our success thus far has been the adoption by other programs at Queens College of our innovations for a poster day and for assessment. In our second five-year cycle, we plan to increase awareness of our program, and thus the size of the student pool from which we draw, by expanded advertising and outreach programs as well as a highly successful "Science For Starters" course. We will also increase financial incentives for pre-MARC students through a new College subsidy, expand our "tutoring for excellence" program, and establishing a MARC-pre-MARC buddy system. This latter initiative will get pre-MARC students into laboratories more quickly, will provide them with peer support, and will give our MARC students experience in mentoring. Throughout our proposed second cycle, we will maintain and expand our extensive assessment and documentation efforts to allow us to judge the impact of our program in terms of recruiting and student outcomes as well as our overall impact on the College. Our first four years have been successful in terms of students placed, prizes won at conventions, papers published or in preparation, and impact on our College and Division. Using the results from our outcomes assessments, we plan to continue to optimize both our training program, and its impact on our College and surrounding community. Public Health Relevance Statement: This proposal is intended to increase the number of researchers in biomedical sciences who derive from under-represented minorities. The pool from which we draw is a major urban region, so that the graduates of our program are likely to return our investment by contributing to the number of researchers at major universities and medical schools in the region.