We propose to include a Summer Undergraduate Research Program since undergraduate education has been a part of our collaborative research for some time. This Summer Research Program is designed to foster and catalyze a longer-term commitment to science among our undergraduates. Because the nature of the methods we utilize in our collective work are complex, it is imperative that the students who participate in our Summer Undergraduate Program have the opportunity to continue their work in a lab of one of the Center PIs. Accordingly, the pool from which we will select will be current undergraduates at UW-Madison. This is a large and selective pool with a population of approximately 28,737 undergraduates. We will draw from undergraduate majors in Psychology, Neurobiology, Computer Science, Physics and several Engineering departments. There are currently >700 majors in these disciplines. The percentage of minority undergraduate students at UW-Madison is 14.45%. We will work with several groups on campus to increase the percentage of minority representation in the Summer Program beyond that of the University as a whole. Over the past five years we have worked with these groups to increase the percentage of minority trainees in our various T32 programs. These include the McNair Scholars Program, Psychology PREP and the PEOPLE pre-college program. We will work closely with the Center for Biology Education here at UW-Madison. This Center is home to the Integrated Biological Sciences Summer Research Program (IBS-SRP) for undergraduates, which consists of 5 disciplinary sub-groups: Computational Biology & Biostatistics, Neurobiology, Cellular & Molecular Biology, Plant Breeding, Development, & Genetics, and Environmental Biology. The IBS-SRP is part of an integrated series of 16 summer programs coordinated by the Graduate School at UW-Madison. They are collectively called Summer Research Opportunity Programs (SROP: www.grad.wisc.edu/education/diversitv/srop/index.htmn and are graduate school preparatory programs that target underserved populations of students. Undergraduates in our Summer Program will participate in group activities coordinated by the IBS-SRP. The main events are weekly meetings during which issues of common interest are presented and discussed including the graduate school application process and issues of professional development, the GREs, and several sessions on research ethics. The core of the Summer Undergraduate Research Program will consist of work in one of the Pi's laboratories. Students will be matched to a Pi's lab based upon a short application that will be required. This application will request the students' grades and one page essay describing his/her aspirations and scientific interests. A total of 12 students will be selected each summer. This will enable two students to work in each of the Pi's or Core Leader's lab each summer. Since the students will all be drawn from UW-Madison, interviews with prospective students will be conducted by the Program Director (see below). Students will work full-time in the Pi's lab for 15 weeks during the summer. We hope to recruit students after either their Freshman or Sophomore years so that they can continue their research in the faculty members' lab and will have the opportunity to conduct a senior thesis. Students will be expected to continue their research work during the academic year though funds are not requested through this program for academic year stipends. In addition to working in a Pi's lab, we will hold two meetings with all Pis as a group each summer for the undergraduate trainees. This will enable the trainees to become acquainted with the Center activities as a whole. During these group meetings. Pi's and/or graduate students and post-docs will give talks on the science that underlies each of the projects and give examples of preliminary data. The undergraduates in the Summer Program will also have a group lunch one day per week. This will provide cohesion to each summer cohort and it will be an opportunity for them to ask questions and discuss the scientific goals of the research in a more informal setting. These lunches will be led by graduate students and post-docs working in the Pi's labs. In addition, the undergraduates will be assigned a few articles/week to read for the lunch and these will be discussed. Each summer we will hold a one-day scientific workshop for the students to present the findings from their summer research. All undergraduates in our Summer Research Program will participate in this workshop. The Program Director for the Summer Program will be selected by the PIs from among the post-doctoral trainees working in the Center. They will be expected to coordinate the recruitment process, organize all lunches and meetings and monitor student progress.
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