Long-term objectives: Increase pool of minorities in community college environment and baccalaureate environment by identifying, attracting, and engaging minority students interested in biomedical science. Establish a direct effort to retain minority students once they are enrolled by building a Bridges to the Baccalaureate advising program; mentoring services; career development/internship opportunities; research opportunities; and stipends for research experiences, organization membership, and travel to conferences. Enhance capacity of partner schools to educate biomedical science students by expanding course offerings and offering student research experiences in university labs under the mentorship of research faculty. Strengthen professional development activities between participating schools and their biomedical science faculty by establishing science symposiums, poster events, and mini-conferences at the regional level. Measure project's success with a tracking system specific to Bridges to the Baccalaureate that measures each school's minority enrollment, retention, and graduation data (specific to health sciences) and each individual student's progress toward his or her terminal goal - either transfer to UNCP or other universities with strong biomedical sciences programs.
Specific Aims :
The specific aims of this project are to address the underrepresentation of minorities in the field of biomedical sciences, especially in view of their relative numbers in the southeastern region of the state. The University of North Carolina at Pembroke and its community college partners have designed a Bridges program which will achieve the long term objectives. The research design consists of: (1) Introducing students to the process of scientific inquiry through active research experiences at the community colleges; (2) Enriching and building upon the existing community college curriculum by increasing the number of life sciences courses, establishing cooperative courses between the partner community colleges and university, and increasing experiential pedagogy into the biomedical curriculum; (3) Measurably strengthening professional development activities between participating institutions and science faculty; and (4) Enhancing resources to build stronger capacity for student and faculty-led research. ? ? ?
