The APS-NIDDK Minority Travel Fellows Program seeks to encourage highly qualified Under-represented minority students to pursue professional careers in physiological and biomedical sciences. To achieve this goal, this project continues and expands a five-pronged program that will: 1. Provide travel fellowships to minority students to attend the Experimental Biology meeting and the APS conferences. At both the Experimental Biology meeting and APS conferences, travel fellows will be hosted by a meeting mentor, an APS member who has volunteered to be a host for the student and to enrich their meeting experience. 2. Provide travel fellowships to faculty members at Minority Access to Research Career (MARC) and Minority Biomedical Research Support (MBRS)-eligible institutions to attend Experimental Biology and the APS conferences. This aspect of the program is designed to enhance the research expertise of faculty and to improve science teaching at these institutions, which serve as a primary source of minority graduate students. 3. Develop and cultivate long-term communication between minority students and their meeting mentor and among minority students. Using electronic communications (email listserv, bulletin boards, and web sites), communication networks developed during the APS meetings will be fostered year-round. Students can share questions, concerns, and ideas with each other and with the APS meeting mentors. 4. Provide support to minority high school and middle school science teachers participating in the APS Science Teachers Summer Research in Physiology Program. This program, now in its 14th year, is designed to encourage the participation of minority groups in physiology and other biomedical sciences by providing their science teachers with summer experiences in physiology research. Teachers share their knowledge and excitement with their students via new classroom activities, field trips, and research projects. 5. Foster communications between minority graduate and postdoctoral students and middle/high school minority life sciences students. This component capitalizes on the relationships the program builds with both minority middle/high school teachers and minority graduate/postdoctoral students. Graduate and postdoctoral students visit classrooms to serve as role models for the minority students. In the proposed project, this will be developed into a postdoctoral APS-NIDDK Outreach Fellowship. Relevance: This program plays an important role in diversifying the biomedical research workforce by supporting scientists-in-training and encouraging interest and supporting excellence in education of future minority science students.
