This NSF award from the Undergraduate Mentoring in Environmental Biology (UMEB) program will support a unique partnership between Hampton University (HU) and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) of the College of William and Mary. This partnership will take form in the DREAMS (Diversity in Research in Environmental And Marine Sciences) program. Hampton University is one of the top ranked minority serving institutions in the nation. It has a history of producing successful graduates in the sciences, including a growing number in environmental biology through its Department of Marine and Environmental Science. VIMS is a major research entity that has a strong reputation for educating graduate students in coastal and environmental biology. The goals of this program are: to enhance the performance of HU undergraduate students studying environmental science, to increase enrollment and retention in HU environmental science programs, to increase the diversity of students in the VIMS graduate program, and to increase the diversity in the environmental workforce in general. DREAMS is a comprehensive program that stresses early involvement in research and strong mentoring as a way to enhance undergraduate performance and the likelihood for success in subsequent graduate training. This is of critical importance, since production of minority graduate students in the environmental sciences is well below that which would be predicted from the pool of students earning undergraduate degrees. The DREAMS program will leverage the UMEB commitment by taking advantage of three other ongoing efforts at Hampton (two sponsored by NOAA, and one by NSF), as well as a new NSF sponsored joint effort between Hampton, VIMS, and Old Dominion University to produce minority PhD's in the ocean sciences.
