Chicago State University (CSU) is an institution with a predominantly African-American student body. Located on the south-side of Chicago, CSU serves the highest proportion of black students of all public universities in the Illinois-Indiana-Iowa-Wisconsin contiguous four-state region and as such it is the largest producer of black baccalaureate degree recipients. The new DEVELOPMENT PLAN evolves from the successful model developed by the CSU RISE faculty for the current cycle. It maintains the basic construct of five hierarchical student development projects as refined by the practical input gained from the past three years of operation. The core goals of the CSU RISE Program are to increase the number of science students continuing their education on to biomedical graduate programs and also to ensure the quality of their preparation. The Program will continue to organize its activities around the following student projects, each of which will have a principal focus on areas which will facilitate achievement of the core goals: Project 1. GRASP - the capstone project which guides students through the graduate school application process. Project 2. ASPIRE - student research experiences. Project 3. TILT - hands-on training project in interdisciplinary biomedical laboratory techniques. Project 4. RESKUE - activities which address improving student retention and grades in key science courses. Project 5. PREMAT - a nurturing project for high-school students which prepares them for university-level work. The new DEVELOPMENT PLAN adds one additional student development component with the objective of increasing both collegiality and a sense of possession among students who participate in the projects in the form of creating a student cohort identified as the 'RISE Scholars'. The objective of this RISE Scholar component is to reduce the feeling of disconnects between the participants in the individual RISE Projects and to maintain better coordination for the progress of students from their entry at different points in their academic development. The CSU MBRS Programs (RISE and SCORE) are designed, in concert, to provide expanded resources for minorities to participate in biomedical research careers by development of student opportunities and the biomedical research capabilities of the Departments of Biology and Chemistry and Physics. The funding of these two Programs will accelerate the realization of the institutional goal of becoming a major focal point of opportunities for under-represented minorities in biomedical training in the Chicago metropolitan area.
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