Statement of Objectives The objectives of this Bridge to the Doctorate proposal is to recruit and retain recent LSAMP STEM Graduates into a research/academic career that leads to the completion of a Ph.D. degree at CUNY or at other doctoral granting institutions. The LSAMP Bridge program in CUNY is not based at any one campus site as the Graduate Center is the primary institution that grants the Doctoral degree in CUNY. Intellectual Merit The approach presented by the NYC Alliance builds on the efforts established over the previous nineteen years of activities in increasing the number of underrepresented minorities in STEM. Central to the approach is changing the atmospherics regarding undergraduate inclusion in research and establishing a CUNY wide list of partners at the student, faculty and staff level. Methods to be Employed Recent LSAMP graduates from the National LSAMP pool of graduates, and LSAMP graduates who have completed no more than one full-time semester equivalent of graduate study shall constitute the group that will be invited to apply for the Bridge to the Doctorate program. LSAMP senior undergraduates will continue to be allowed to participate in Bridge activities. Bridge students will be beneficiaries of a proactive retention and professional enrichment program that will include academic and research mentoring, GRE workshops, roundtable discussions with advanced doctoral students, faculty and administrators, and attendance and participation at local and national professional conferences. The at-large faculty pool associated with the CUNY Graduate Center, and CUNY Institute/Center Directors will serve as Bridge faculty/research advisors. The Alliance will continue to partner with Brookhaven National Labs to provide cutting-edge research training during the academic year and summer terms. International research experiences will also be integrated into the training of all selected BD scholars. Expected Results It is expected that the NYC LSAMP Bridge program will add 125 students to the Ph.D. pipeline from Cohorts 1-9 (2003 through 2013). BROADER IMPACTS OF THE PROPOSED ACTIVITY A critical infrastructure component for research and education is the availability of competent and committed students. The Bridge program will continue to serve as a catalyst for raising financial support for graduate students to a level that would attract US citizens into the STEM research pipeline in numbers sufficient to sustain the national STEM enterprise. LSAMP will continue to use the level of support provided by the Bridge program to leverage an increase in STEM graduate student compensation across the board, in order to sustain an increase in Ph.D. throughput beyond its two-year duration.
