Bridges to the Baccalaureate Research Training Program at Howard University and Baltimore City Community College

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The “Bridges to Baccalaureate (B2B) Research Training Program at Howard University and Baltimore City Community College” program is a creative STEM training program that is a great fit for B2B. Five B2B students per year will be selected via a rigorous review process and provided educational readiness by P2P while still incarcerated, transition to a 2-year associates granting school (BCCC), be provided skills and methods development while at BCCC, participate in a 10-week STEM research internship at Howard in the summer in between years 1 and 2, then transition to a 4-year school, upon completing their associates degree at BCCC. We plan to start a 5-participant cohort each year of the 5-year funding period. The program will address the following, which is explained in detail within the proposal: 1. Skills development will be gained via the Leadership, College & Professional Readiness, and SAT portions of the P2P program and Intro to Research Workshops will be implemented during the community college time span. 2. Research Experience will be obtained via a 10-week internship with one of nearly 20 collaborating investigators at Howard University and scholars will attend a national meeting to present their work. 3. Curriculum and Methods To provide supplemental instruction for gateway courses, development will include a molecular techniques course incorporated into General Biology (BCCC BTC 105 - Techniques and Instrumentation for Biotechnology) 4. A. Recruitment Plan: We will do a multitude of activities detailed in the proposal but briefly, P2P already works with over 100 individuals per year in their actively running program. Priority will be given to select the top five people of the P2P program. Other recruitment will be done as well, such as placing ads on local hip-hop and top 40 radio stations and utilizing connections already in place with community organizations and government (MD-DOC) partners. 4. B. Retention Plan: We will provide incentives: 60% tuition scholarships, yearly stipends, paid internships, and mentoring opportunities to give back. The goal of the P2P-B2B program is to create synergies between prisons and 2- and 4- year colleges in Baltimore (creating a prison-to-college pipeline) and to increase the transition to BS/BA degrees from AA degrees. Partners & PDs/PIs: 1. Howard University College of Medicine (Dr. Andrisse, lead-PI), 2. Baltimore City Community College (Dr. Schaumloffel, Co-PI), 3. Prison to Professionals (Ms. Skudrzyk, PD). Cross-Disciplinary Perspective: Interdisciplinary approaches are often needed to push the frontiers of research and education. Dr. Andrisse and P2P know first-hand the vast amount of talent and potential that is being missed out on in the currently and formerly incarcerated population. These men and women are primarily people of color and thus have two significant indicators of underrepresentation in the sciences and education. Thus, this project is taking the highly innovative approach to intersect the worlds of research, education, and incarceration by creating a ground-breaking prison-to-college-and-STEM pipeline.