The University of Wisconsin Madison's Undergraduate Research and Mentoring (URM) program will provide research experiences and trained mentors to motivate and prepare undergraduate students beginning their sophomore year to succeed in emerging, interdisciplinary areas of biological sciences research. The primary goal of the program is to directly prepare a more diverse population of students to pursue and complete graduate education. The project aims to achieve this by: 1) recruiting a diverse group of program participants; 2) building a multiyear, graduate preparatory program that prepares students to do interdisciplinary research in the biological sciences; 3) providing mentor training that focuses on mentoring students in interdisciplinary research; and 4) evaluating and disseminating our methods and products. Students who are members of underrepresented groups in the sciences, from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, have transferred to UW-Madison, or who have a registered disability are especially encouraged to apply. NSF funds will provide two years of research support to program students, with continued support in the third year provided by the host laboratory, or the UW-Madison Undergraduate Fellowships Office. Mentors will be drawn from new and interdisciplinary areas and will be trained in the Wisconsin Mentoring Seminar. The program includes an undergraduate seminar series designed to help students find an appropriate mentor and establish a positive relationship with him/her, acclimate to the research community, learn about laboratory safety and the ethical conduct of research, and generally get the most out of their research experience. In addition, URM students will engage in leadership experiences, peer mentoring, GRE preparation workshops, giving presentations at research conferences, and designing and organizing monthly student meetings attended by all program participants. To learn more, please visit the program website (www.wisc.edu/cbe/urm/) or contact the Program Director, Dr. Janet Branchaw (branchaw@wisc.edu, 608/262-1182).
The Undergraduate Research and Mentoring (URM) program at the University of Wisconsin - Madison was an intensive, three-year graduate school preparatory program that served 27 students from diverse backgrounds. The goals of the program were to: 1. Recruit a diverse group of program participants. 2. Build a multiyear, graduate preparatory program that prepares students to do interdisciplinary research in the biological sciences. 3. Provid mentor training to a broader audience that focuses on mentoring students in interdisciplinary research. 4. Evaluate our approach and creating products for dissemination beyond UW-Madison. All of the program goals were met. At the time of the award end date, 20 program participants had completed their undergraduate degrees and 11 of those students were pursuing graduate degrees (PhD and MS) in the sciences. Four program participants had been awarded NSF Graduate Research Fellowships. The remainder of the program participants were either finishing their undergraduate studies, pursing professional degrees or working in science careers. A curriculum to guide beginning undergraduate researchers was developed as part of this program. It is available to support undergraduate research programs and mentors as a published facilitators manual (Entering Research: A Facilitator's Manual (2010), Branchaw, J., Pfund. C and Rediske, R.). In addition, a research paper reporting the learning outcomes of students who were supported by the Entering Research curriculum has been published (Balster, N., Pfund, C., Rediske, R. and J. Branchaw (2010) CBE Life Sciences Education. 9(2), 108). The URM program components have been institutionalized at the Institute for Biology Education and the BioCommons learning community at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. They are available to all students on campus, who are interested in engaging in undergraduate research and pursuing graduate training in science research. In addition, research mentor training in science has been institutionalized at UW-Madison and is now available to all graduate students and post-doctoral fellows.
