The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) is a Minority-Serving Institution whose students reflect the character of South Texas and the changing demographics of the country. Although the University is only 30 years old, it is poised to become the next premier research institution in Texas. The faculty and administration are committed to this vision and have identified mental-health research as a critical area for further development. However, because it is a young institution faced with the demands of burgeoning enrollments, UTSA is strained to provide the type of infrastructure support that is necessary to realize its potential in the area of mental-health research. The support of M-RISP would enable UTSA to advance its mental-health research program and address the mental-health issues of a large, underserved and understudied sector of South Texas. The specific goals of the proposal are to: (1) Enhance the capability of faculty to undertake mental-health research; (2) Increase the number of faculty-especially members of ethnic minority groups-conducting mental-health research; (3) Increase the number of students-especially members of ethnic minority groups-who are involved in mental-health research; and (4) Strengthen ties to mental-health researchers in San Antonio and South Texas. As UTSA achieves these goals, it will be able to make more substantive contributions to mental health research and, in the process, help fill the need for investigators from underrepresented groups. Moreover, because ethnic minority groups comprise 59% of the population of San Antonio, UTSA is ideally situated to examine the mental-health issues of these understudied and underserved groups.
