This proposal is a competing continuation application for an existing Bridges to the Baccalaureate Degree Program (PAR-02-084) at New Mexico State University (NMSU) Las Cruces. The program proposes to serve American Indian (AI) students at six community colleges. These institutions enroll 4,789 AI students from the Dine (Najao) Nationa, the Jicarilla Apache Tribe, and 19 New Mexico Pueblos. They include: three tribal institutions, Dine College at Shiprock, Dine College at Tsaile, and Crownpoint Institute of Technology; San Juan College; and two state-supported community colleges at Northern New Mexico Community College and the University of New Mexico-Gallup Branch. Funding for three years is requested for programmatic activities that recruit, enrich, enhance preparedness, and advance AI students into baccalaureate degree programs aligned with the biomedical sciences. The annual goals of this application are: (i) An academic-year seminar/lecture/workshop series will be organized at the community colleges with 30 faculty presenters from NMSU. This will introduce greatr than or equal too 120 AI science majors to research career opportunities in biomedicine and biomedical-related research in progress at NMSU. (ii) From the pool in goal (i), 35 AI students will visit the NMSU campus each spring for a 2.5-day orientation program to prepare for research experiences. (iii) From the pool of goal (ii), 17 AI students will conduct fulltime research with a faculty mentor and participate in many structured enrichment workshops during nine summer weeks at the campus of NMSU. Enrichment workshops will emphasize skills development in science-writing, abstract preparation, poster preparation, computer skills for conducting research, academic transfer procedures, academic advisement, and oral communications. (iv) Faculty seminar presenters will serve as summer research mentors and as academic advisors after students transfer to a B.S. program at NMSU. (v) This application proposes to transfer 70% of summer research participants to B.S. institutions and to graduate 50% of the transferees to completion of a B.S. degree within ten semesters. (vi) Opportunities are proposed for science instructors from the community colleges to conduct research on projects at NMSU during the summer months. This Bridge Program has advanced 62% (89 of 145 total) of its summer research participants into baccalaureate degree programs and has graduated 47.5% of these transferees with B.S. degrees since 1992.
