SJSU MARC U-STAR Program ABSTRACT The SJSU MARC U-STAR program has been committed to support underrepresented students for nearly 30 years. As the new Program Director, Dr. Cleber Costa Ouverney, has inherited a dedicated cohort of trainees, a highly-motivated group of mentors, and a committed administrative staff who endorse the mission of this prestigious NIGMS program in its entirety. Of the 167 trainees who have graduated from the program since 1988, 97% graduated with a BA/BS degree and 60% continued into a post baccalaureate degree (MS, PhD, or MD/PhD). The number of PhD-seeking trainees from our program has continuously increased over the six cycles of funding and we have 67 trainees who are either enrolled or have earned their PhD/MD-PhD degree. Nonetheless, areas of improvement to our program have been identified by the former PD (Dr. Leslee Parr), Dr. Ouverney, and the program evaluator and we address these improvements in this renewal application. Overall, this proposal combines goals that will retain the strengths the program has accumulated over decades while enhancing the recruitment and training of MARC trainees, while better tracking our MARC fellows accomplishments for years to come. For instance, we included innovative approaches that establish collaborative work with the IRACDA postdocs from Stanford University who will provide additional mentoring to our trainees about various aspects of research projects, research presentation skills, and preparation of applications to graduate school. Our strong network with Summer Research Programs will serve as a bridge to our trainees to identify laboratories to conduct their summer research experience. We also propose to increase visibility of the program in our communities and have started to give talks at local school serving a large number of URM students about the opportunities for research training at SJSU, such as MARC, RISE and LSAMP programs. The strength of this program makes us certain that we can support a larger cohort of students and we are requesting an increase of MARC trainees from 9 to 12. A recent increase in hiring of faculty STEM tenure-track faculty and an increase in grants in the MARC hosting departments have made many new laboratories ready to host more MARC students.
The primary goal of this MARC U-STAR training program is to improve the academic preparedness and research training in biomedical research for high performing (honors) undergraduate minority students at San Jos State University (SJSU). In this way, we will increase the number of these students entering Ph.D. and M.D./Ph.D. degrees in the biomedical sciences. Ultimately, we intend to prepare our trainees to be highly productive, leading biomedical scientists who will contribute to the progress and improvements in public health for many years to come.
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