RIO PIEDRAS MARC U*STAR DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed MARC U*STAR Program at the Rio Piedras Campus seeks to improve an already exemplary program by increasing the number of trainees who enter prestigious graduate programs and with new strategies designed to ensure that more of its trainees will be in positions to enter into the mainstream of the nation's scientific community. To this end, the Program will continue to recruit highly talented students and provide them with a mentored intramural research experience that includes a well-defined project that leads to results which will be presented at scientific meetings or published and which will be described in a tesina. Emphasis will also be placed on an appropriate summer research at an external site, counseling and assistance in graduate school applications. In order to meet these objectives it will continue to seek positions for 34 trainees. It will establish direct communications with research supervisors who have recruited its ex-trainees in order to gain feedback on research training strategies. It will provide its trainees with workshops that improve their communications skills, particularly English writing, and will emphasize their participation in technical workshops. The Program also seeks funding to accelerate the development of the entry level Biology and Mathematics courses and to further improve those in Chemistry. These activities will not only increase the retention rate and reduce the time to graduation of all Biology and Chemistry majors, but in five years should increase the pool of MARC eligible rising Juniors by at least a 100 students. A series of science promotions will be included in order to direct more of these into careers into biomedical research.