This application is a competing renewal to continue the Underrepresented Minority Research Fellowship (UMRF) Program, a predoctoral training program administered by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE). This program will help to educate the leaders of the Nation's next generation of mental health researchers. This program will increase the number of minority scientists trained to conduct research in mental health and mental illness. The predoctoral trainees are social workers with master's degrees representing all of the underrepresented groups and enrolled as full time doctoral students in social work doctoral programs with strong mental health research. They will be mentored by a funded mental health researcher, take courses in mental health research, and will develop the skills needed to become successful researchers. CSWE will recruit social workers for this program from across the United States. The program director, with the assistance of the National Research Advisory Committee composed of NIMH funded mental health researchers, will select and place students in doctoral programs and will continue to counsel and support their doctoral work. The program has demonstrated that it can recruit outstanding underrepresented fellows and can provide them with strong training in research knowledge and skills that will enable them to be among the next generation of mental health researchers. Former fellows are an essential part of the program's recruitment efforts. Opportunities are provided to trainees to enhance their research training. This will include participation in an orientation session for new trainees, as well as involvement in mental health and social work research conferences, summer workshops in advanced research methodology, seminars on various mental health subjects, technical assistance workshops on the development of dissertation research proposals as well as encouragement and assistance in developing applications for other NIMH research and research development opportunities that will assist them in their development as research scientists.
