Kansas continues to become a diverse state with greater percentages of Hispanics in the southwest part of the state, middle of the state, and in some of the eastern parts of the state, and increasing African- Americans in the Eastern part. Many of the community colleges are the first choice of underrepresented minorities in pursuing their higher education goals, and many are first generation college bound students. Three of the community colleges located in southwest Kansas, with which Kansas State University (KSU) proposes to partner, have a high Hispanic enrollment. Two of the community colleges in the Kansas City, Kansas area have a high percentage of African-American students. In 2003, KSU was awarded its first Bridges to the Baccalaureate grant where a partnership with these 5 community colleges was established to identify, mentor and guide minority students with potential into biomedical careers. Students identified for the Bridges program received dual admission to the community college and to KSU with tuition waivers. We propose to continue this grassroots effort in the RENEWAL beginning at the community college level to develop biomedical career awareness, enhance the academic preparation skills of selected Bridges students, seek parental involvement, and devote resources to the community colleges to allow for sufficient academic advisement of these students. We propose to continue the """"""""best practices"""""""" we have developed in the last 2 years including: 1) Visit to KSU during an Open House in April to meet with KSU professors and other minority students; 2) A short one-week summer institute will make Bridges students aware of scientific investigation and opportunities after their freshman year; 3) allowing Bridges students the opportunity to work for 8 weeks at KSU in the laboratory of a scientific investigator after year 2; and 4) enhancing the ability to conduct research at the community college by having selected instructors work at a KSU laboratory for an 8 week summer period to help bridge gaps in research training and curriculum development. All students will be prepared in a rigorous foundation of science, chemistry and math to help assure their later success at a 4 year institution. Students will be awarded a work stipend to enable them to work as research assistants for 2 years under KSU's Developing Scholars Program. The overall goal is to increase the number of Kansas minority students pursuing PhDs or MD-PhDs in the biomedical field. ? ? ?
