UT Summer Undergraduate Research Experiences in the Environmental Health Sciences

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UT Summer Undergraduate Research Experiences in the Environmental Health Sciences Project Summary This research and educational intervention effort proposes to recruit ten talented and diverse underrepresented undergraduate students from across the U.S. to the University of Tennessee (UT) campus for immersive ten- week summer research experiences in the biomedical sciences. In a unique partnership between the Center for Environmental Biotechnology, the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering, and the Office of Undergraduate Research, we are proposing to implement research challenges for underrepresented undergraduate students under the general theme of ‘health, science, and the environment’. For this effort, we have enlisted an academically (MD, Ph.D., and/or DVM credentials across 11 departmental affiliations) and culturally (African-American, Hispanic and Latino, rural Appalachian, female, first-generation) diverse group of 20 faculty role models, 60% with a lineage of NIH funding, to provide mentorship and rigorous hands-on research training to our students with a focused goal of building self-efficacy and strengthening persistence toward their pursuit of an advanced degree in the biomedical sciences. Complementary to their research responsibilities, students will also engage in workshops and classroom instruction on experimental design, ethics, statistical analysis, laboratory management, entrepreneurship, and science communication to ensure strong scholarship and career development metrics are upheld across the science, technology, engineering, mathematical, and medical science (STEMM) disciplines. Student research will culminate in a campus-wide and publicly open poster session that will be jointly held among all of UT’s various internal and external summer undergraduate research programs. A robust recruitment plan has been developed to capture our desired student clientele from historically black, Hispanic-serving, and other smaller non-research intensive liberal arts colleges that provide excellent instruction but little in the way of independent laboratory inquiry. As well, an evaluation plan is in place for surveying immediate and long-term goal attainments, an Advisory Committee has been convened for independent project oversight and counsel, and a dissemination plan will be implemented to promote local and national distribution of our findings through research scholarship by our undergraduate participants and their faculty mentors and use of our undergraduates as science spokespersons within our summer K-12 outreach activities. Collectively, this outreach and intervention mission will enhance the retention of underrepresented minorities in the STEMM disciplines and serve to bridge the racial, ethnic, and gender disparity gaps inherent to the U.S. biomedical higher education and workforce fields.