The UC Berkeley Graduate/Undergraduate IMSD Program - An Integrated Approach

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this proposal is to develop a UC Berkeley IMSD Program that will (1) increase the number of under-represented minority (URM) undergraduates that enter biomedical PhD programs, and (2) increase the number of current URM graduate students that enter biomedical research careers, especially as faculty. The proposed program will take an integrated approach that involves 1) undergraduates in Berkeley's Biology Scholars Program (BSP), 2) Berkeley biomedical graduate students in Public Health, Natural Resources, and Letters and Science, and 3) biomedical faculty from Berkeley and three partner colleges and universities. Its design will leverage the 16 years of undergraduate success of BSP combined with the best components of a highly successful graduate student initiated organization (Scientists of Color) at Berkeley that produced fourteen URM biomedical science faculty. The Program will provide IMSD Graduate Fellows with networking activities, faculty mentoring, and opportunities 1) to improve their teaching skills by giving guest lectures in biomedical courses at our partner colleges/universities (San Francisco State University, Mills College, and Contra Costa College) and 2) to improve their mentoring skills by working with BSP URM undergraduates in courses, seminars, and research labs. In turn, the IMSD Undergraduate Scholars (selected from among 500 URMs in BSP) will benefit through funded research opportunities, mentoring by IMSD Fellows and academic support in their core science courses. A network of over 60 biomedical faculty at Berkeley and our partner colleges/universities have committed to be mentors for both the Scholars and Fellows to support the goals of this proposal and the IMSD initiative. The total number of students supported by this four-year grant will be 1) 30 IMSD Undergraduate Scholars and 2) 12 IMSD Graduate Fellows. Our project targets are 1) for IMSD Scholars, upon graduation at least 60% will go directly into biomedical Ph.D. programs, and 2) for IMSD Fellows, at least 90% will complete their Ph.D. and continue on to a biomedical post-doctoral fellowship or faculty position.