MARC U-STAR Program at Washington University in St. Louis

描述（由申请人提供）：华盛顿大学在生物医学和行为科学领域的本科和研究生教育方面享有盛誉。作为多元化成果的一贯表现和全国领先的研究机构之一，华盛顿大学特别适合成为解决少数民族学生在这些科学领域代表性不足问题的一部分。我们提议的MARC U-STAR项目是一个全面的、为期四年的项目，它利用了我们大量高潜力的少数族裔学生，以及我们现有的基础设施，这些基础设施在招收和留住生物医学相关科学领域的少数族裔学生方面非常成功。我们的招生和留用战略建立在现有基础设施的基础上，以吸引代表性不足的少数族裔进入科学领域，为学生建立一个早期的学术社区，使他们能够尽早选择攻读科学学位，在生物医学研究方面对他们进行培训，并将他们留在华盛顿大学或其他地方的研究生院攻读生物医学和行为科学。这个项目将是一个更大的大学范围内的倡议的重要组成部分，该倡议旨在提高华盛顿大学毕业生注册和完成博士课程的比例。我们的理由是，虽然我们不像其他少数民族占多数的大学那样招收少数民族学生，但我们所有的少数民族学生（2006年有830名学生）以前都取得了非常高的成就，并且有很高的潜力完成生物医学或行为科学的博士学位。此外，大约60%的少数族裔学生（每届130人）在进入大学时将生物医学相关科学作为学术和职业兴趣，但只有一小部分人追求生物医学相关的博士学位。我们建议每班培训6名学生；考虑到我们的少数民族人口，我们的学生对生物医学相关科学的高兴趣，以及这些领域的高学生成功率，这是非常可行的。即使在marc学者攻读博士学位的成功率为75%的情况下，我们也将实现少数民族学生在生物医学相关科学领域攻读博士学位的人数增加约四倍。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Washington University is widely recognized for excellence in undergraduate and graduate education in the biomedical and behavioral sciences. As a consistent performer in diversity outcomes and one of the nation's leading research institutions, Washington University is particularly well suited to be part of the solution to underrepresentation of minority students in these sciences. Our proposed MARC U-STAR program is a comprehensive, four-year program that capitalizes on the large number of our high-potential minority students and on our existing infrastructure that has been so successful at recruiting and retaining minority students in the biomedically-related sciences. Our recruitment and retention strategy builds upon existing infrastructure to attract underrepresented minorities to the sciences, build an early scholarly community for the students, empower them early in their choice to pursue science degrees, train them in biomedical research, and retain them in the biomedical and behavioral sciences pipeline to and through graduate school at Washington University or elsewhere. This program will be part of a critical component of a greater university-wide initiative to increase the percentage of Washington University graduates enrolling in and completing Ph.D. programs. Our rationale is that while we do not serve as many minority students as other universities with majority-minority populations, all of our minority students (830 students in 2006) have very high previous achievements and have high potential to complete Ph.D.'s in a biomedical or behavioral science. Further, around 60% of our minority students (130 per entering class) cite biomedically-related science as an academic and career interest upon entrance to the University, yet only a tiny fraction pursue biomedically-relevant Ph.D.'s. We propose to support 6 students per entering class in the training program; this is more than feasible, given our minority population, our high student interest in the biomedically-related sciences, and high student success rate in these fields. With even a modest, 75% success rate at MARC-scholar Ph.D. pursuits, we will realize an approximately four-fold increase in the number of Ph.D. pursuits of our minority students in the biomedically-relevant sciences. Public Health Relevance Statement: This program will have significant, demonstrable impact on the total number of minority students pursuing and completing Ph.D.'s in the biomedical-related sciences (an approximately four-fold increase at Washington University. The program will have a positive impact upon public health and will increase representation in biological and biomedical fields.