The University of California-Irvine's URM program will increase the number, level of academic excellence, and diversity of undergraduates who enter and excel in graduate programs in areas of biological research supported by the NSF. Students will be recruited early in their careers (freshman and sophomore) and prepared for entry into the program through faculty seminars, visits to research labs, and activities that will expose recruits to exciting careers in biology. During their junior and senior years, students will be paid to conduct year-round independent research under the direction of a faculty mentor, and prepared for successful entry into graduate programs. Students will join the labs of faculty mentors who have experience in training under-represented minority students and who have funded grants from NSF BIO. Various mentoring and hands-on research activities have been designed to develop the student critical thinking and communication skills, including research seminars, courses on laboratory safety, ethics, and biostatistics, a workshop on principles and practice of biological research, a journal club, presentation of papers at local and national conferences, GRE preparation, and workshops on graduate school application process. The program's innovation derives from the use of the most current knowledge and experience in undergraduate research and mentoring, particularly those that have been found to effectively recruit and retain under-represented minorities in the science and research enterprise. The URM program will enhance the pool of highly qualified, under-represented minority individuals who will enter top-notch graduate programs in biology. More information is available at http://port.bio.uci.edu/urm/.
