Medgar Evers College is committed to strengthen its research infrastructure and provide underrepresented minority and women faculty and students an opportunity to enhance participation in research. Phase I EARDA- FRESP provided the Institutional P.I., Dr. Karan, an opportunity to participate in the ten week summer training program at NIH and the funds to implement her Phase I plan. She established the Health Science Research Assistance Center (HSRAC) IN THE School of Science, Health and Technology, and through HSRAC has implemented all the activities she had planned for Phase I EARDA. During this phase, faculty participation in proposal writing has been enhanced, and the number of research awards received by faculty and student has increased. A major goal of Phase II EARDA-FRESP is to further assist faculty develop research capability and generate competitive grant proposals to obtain research funds from larger federal funding agencies, i.e., NIH, NSF, NASA, DOD, et. Al. Dr. Karan will continue as P.I. in Phase II EARDA-FRESP and carries over some writing skills, i.e., grant information sessions, grant proposal writing workshops, workshops for Web page creation and on-line grant information searches. HSRAC will continue its Pilot Project Awards in the areas of conduct workshops on electronic submission of grant proposals to NSF (FastLane) jointly with the MEC Other planned activities include improvement of the HSRAC Web page, reorganization of MEC IRB, faculty and student recognition events honoring those who received research grants, participation in a regional NIH/OPRR Seminar in fall 2000, assisting faculty and students expand research collaboration with outside institutions and establishing a Center of Excellence in Faculty and Students Research in the School of Science, Health and Technology.