A National Urban Model for Minority Undergraduate Biomedical Education

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In our current grant the overall goal was to increase the number of minority undergraduate students trained in biomedical engineering (BME) by building on an existing partnership, between faculty in BME at The City College of New York, a publicly funded minority-serving institution with limited resources, and researchers in currently eight of the preeminent medical research institutions in New York City. This consortium is known as the New York Center for Biomedical Engineering and is an official CUNY Institute. In the current application this goal is expanded to include internships and employment opportunities for our students in a network of major industrial firms in health care related technology and the utilization of our newly established Industry Advisory Board. The Board will provide input into our curriculum, especially with regard to our senior BME capstone design course. The renewal application also contains new strategies for retention and recruitment, the creation of a mentorship and teaching fellow program which will closely integrate each student scholar with a senior Ph.D. student and an expansion of our high school outreach program in which we will establish strategic relationships with high school guidance counselors and assistant principles of science to recruit talented high achieving students who are interested in the life sciences and/or engineering. We will also expand our collaborative partnership with STEM and the College Now program to help prepare underrepresented students for college and careers in science, engineering and mathematics. To achieve these goals we propose the following four specific objectives: 1. To build and maintain a steady state annual base of 20 high achieving minority scholars in BME who have a GPA of at least 3.0. 2. To build a mentorship and retention program in which each undergraduate scholar is under the paid supervision of an advanced BME Ph.D. student. 3. To build an industrial outreach program with select biotech companies which will provide summer Internships and design projects for the senior year design course and other feedback for improving the curriculum. 4. To expand our existing outreach program to inner-city high schools.