This proposal is a competing continuation application for an existing Bridges to the Baccalaureate Degree Program (RFA: GM-99-012) at New Mexico State University (NMSU), Las Cruces. The program proposes to serve American Indian Students at seven community colleges which enroll over 1900 students from the Dine' (Navajo) Nation, the Mescalero Apache Tribe, and nineteen New Mexico Pueblos. The seven community colleges include: three tribal institutions, Dine' College at Shiprock, NM (DSC), Dine'College at Tsaile, AZ (DCT); Crownpoint Institute of Technology (CIT) at Crownpoint, NM; and four state-supported community colleges at Grants, Alamogordo, Dona Ana and Northern New Mexico Community College (NNMCC) AT Espanola, NM. The proposed program requests three years of funding for programs that introduce American Indian students to B.S. degree and career opportunities in the biomedical sciences at a time when they choose their career track. This will be achieved by the following activities: (i) Twenty faculty from NMSU will organize and offer a seminar/lecture/workshop series at the community colleges during the academic year. This will introduce about 100 American Indian science majors each year to research career opportunities in biomedicine and biomedically-related research programs in progress at NMSU; (ii) this seminar series will introduce students to active research-oriented faculty who will be prospective mentors for students during summer research projects at NMSU and after students transfer to a B.S. program at NMSU; (iii) approximately 30 recruited students from all seven campuses will visit the NMSU campus once during each academic year for a three-day orientation program; (iv) seventeen students recruited from those who attend the orientation will conduct fulltime research with a faculty mentor during ten summer weeks at the campus of NMSU; (v) when these students transfer to bachelor programs aligned to the biomedical sciences at NMSU, they will be assimilated immediately into successful research-oriented MBRS and MARC Programs that can guide them to completion of the B.S. degree with expert advisement for progression into post baccalaureate graduate school; and lastly, (vi) opportunities are proposed for two science instructors from the community colleges to annually conduct research at NMSU during the summer months. Three major improvements to the existing Program are proposed. Student persistence and retention will be forced by ten annual tuition scholarship awards and the institution of a two-semester course in organic chemistry at DSC. The course will be taught through telecommunications technologies from NMSU. Treisman-style tutorials in organic chemistry will be offered at NMSU. This Bridge Program has advanced 63 percent (64 of 102 total) of its summer research participates into baccalaureate degree programs since 1993.
