This award to The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). The College of New Jersey will establish an Undergraduate Research and Mentoring (URM) program that provides an intensive, sustained research mentoring program for underrepresented students in order to motivate and prepare them for graduate school in Biology. The program will engage twenty students (two cohorts of 10, recruited in the first two years of the five-year grant) from their freshman through senior years, including 1.5 years of support from NSF as juniors and seniors. At least 11 faculty members will serve as research mentors/advisors, with research programs spanning environmental biology and the biology of model organisms. The program will developmentally increase the students' independence as apprentice scientists. Freshman participants will do month-long mini-rotations through three environmental biology labs and three model-organism labs, after which students will choose the lab that interests them the most as their research home for the next three years. After their freshman year, students will earn academic credit for research courses that they take for participating in the program. Students conduct full-time research in TCNJ's summer research program for one summer, which they continue on during their junior and senior years. This sustained experience will allow projects to come to fruition and be the basis for scientific writing exercise as the students prepare their work for publication with the faculty mentor. Students are expected to present their research at one regional and one national scientific conference. The students will be peer-mentored by a more senior-member in their lab, and eventually become peer mentors themselves. The program includes visits to research universities, a seminar series featuring minority scientists, mentoring and skills-building workshops, an annual oral research symposium, application to university REU programs and graduate school, and a graduate record exam (GRE) preparation course. More information is vailable by contacting the Program Director, Dr. Janet A. Morrison, morrisja@tcnj.edu, or by visiting www.tcnj.edu/~biology/opportunities/ggsb.index.htm.
