The University of Hawaii at Manoa is the flagship undergraduate and research campus of the 10-campus University of Hawaii State-wide system. The ethnically diverse student population reflects the State population, and, in fact, there is no majority group. The institution's mission and goals emphasize educational equity, diversity, and the recruitment and retention of students and faculty of under-represented groups. These include Filipino, Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (Samoan, Tongan, Micronesian, Chamorro), and it is these groups that are served by the MARC U*STAR Program. The Pacific Biomedical Research Center, the third largest organized research unit in the system, houses the majority of UH's biomedical, biotech, and biological research and has been the sponsoring unit for the MARC Program for more than 20 years. Part of its mission is the research training of under-represented undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and faculty. The overall goal of the NIH MARC Program is to increase the number of minority students who complete Ph.D.s leading to careers in biomedical sciences. The UH MARC Program seeks to accomplish that goal by increasing the research, academic, and personal preparedness of selected, honors-caliber, minority undergraduates to successfully compete for graduate training opportunities. The major features of the program are a two-year research internship, intensive academic advising, GRE preparation, travel to national scientific meetings, and summer research at a US Mainland institution. Additional enrichment components include research symposia, tutorials, hands-on instrumentation training, and lectures and workshops on ethics, career options, and scientific communication. Ten minority undergraduates will be matched with faculty mentors in scientific disciplines such as Molecular Biology, Cancer Research, Cell Biology, Neurobiology, Psychology, Microbiology, Zoology, Reproductive Biology, Conservation Biology, and Retrovirology. Formative and summative evaluation is integrated with the program plan for assessment of the impact of all components of the proposed training. ? ?
