A five year program to Enhance Neuroscience Diversity through Undergraduate Research Experiences (ENDURE) will be developed at Michigan State University (MSU). Its goal is to increase the number of underrepresented minority (URM) Ph.D.s trained in neurosciences: specifically to facilitate their entry into high quality and highly competitive mainland Ph.D. or dual degree (M.D. / Ph.D., D.O./Ph.D., D.V.M./Ph.D) programs with a Neuroscience emphasis and enhance their likeliness of their success in the program. Central to this is the need to 1) identify talented students with potential for Ph.D studies in Neuroscience; 2) introduce them to career opportunities in neuroscience; 3) provide research training and individual mentoring; 4) increase their competitiveness for graduate study; 5) and provide additional professional development activities. To do this a bridge program is proposed encompassing the last two years of undergraduate study. It entails established partnerships between MSU and 4 minority serving institutions (MSIs): two campuses in Puerto Rico in the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) system (UPR-Cayey and UPR-Arecibo), as well as two MSIs in the Southwest (Northern New Mexico College and St. Mary's University). To introduce students to neuroscience, a day-long workshop entitled, What is Neuroscience? will be held annually on each of the partnering campuses. Annual support will be provided for 8 summer students to work full-time at MSU on a 10-12 weeks research project in productive laboratories which are actively funded by extramural grants. To sustain student interest in neuroscience, a two semester videoconference journal club will be held at MSU and broadcast live to the 4 MSIs. It will be led by URM grad students in the neurosciences at MSU. Six URM students annually from the four MSIs will spend the fall semester between their 3rd and 5th yrs at MSU taking 9 credits of classwork and continuing on an original, hypothesis-based research project. Included will be a seminar-type course stressing translational and interdisciplinary approaches to understanding the etiology of human disease. This course will entail significant practice in writing, as well as an integral journal club. Improvement of communication skills will involve both informal and more formalized settings (research presentations, participation in class, journal club participation and paper writing). Student progress in both course work and research will be closely monitored and externally evaluated. This program will increase the number of URM students entering Ph.D programs in Neuro-/Behavioral Science, by 1) increasing the student's awareness for research career opportunities in neuroscience, 2) improving their English language skills, 3) providing high quality mentored research experience during the undergraduate studies to `springboard the student into the Ph.D program, and 4) providing further didactic training in neuroscience principles, scientific writing and career enrichment activities. Through these combined activities, the student will become more confident in the application process, present a more competitive application and make valuable contacts (network) with researchers at MSU and elsewhere.
Increasing the number of under-represented minority (URM) PhDs trained in the neurosciences will increase diversity in the biomedical workforce. This ENDURE application is designed to facilitate entry into biomedical PhD programs for URM students, and will focus on preparing them as undergrads for admission to high quality, competitive PhD programs. Research experiential and didactic and training will be coupled with increased attention to communicating in English- a critical prerequisite for success in a US-based PhD program; these will better prepare URM students for admission into highly competitive PhD programs.
