This application seeks to continue support for a Program to train underrepresented minority undergraduate students in research in environmental health. The Program provides minority undergraduate students with opportunities to be involved in environmental health research at a sufficiently early point in their education so that this experience will convince some of them may choose environmental health research for their careers. There are three NIEHS sponsored research-training programs on this campus. These include ES07017, Environmental Pathology; ES07018, Biostatistics for Research in Environmental Health; and ES07126, Pre-and Postdoctoral training in Toxicology. The training proposed in this application will place minority undergraduate students under the supervision of a faculty mentor from one of these environmental training programs. Ideally, two trainees will be placed with preceptors from each program each year. Trainees will be selected from among applicants to the Summer Pre-Graduate Research Experience (SPGRE) Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This established and effective Program attracts top ranked undergraduate students from underrepresented minorities to this campus for a summer academic experience. Applicants to the SPGRE Program with appropriate background and interest in research on environmental disease will be selected for this Program and paired with a research mentor. Facilitators in this Program match applicants with appropriate faculty mentors engaged in research in the area of the student's interest. The goal of this Program is to motivate these students to pursue graduate education in environmental health fields following completion of their undergraduate education. The extent to which the trainees make such career decisions is the measure of the investigators' success. At best, these trainees will opt to pursue their graduate training in one of the three sponsoring NIEHS training programs on this campus or a similar program at another institution. Through these efforts the investigators hope to contribute to an increase in minority representation among health professionals in environmental health sciences. They believe that they have made very good progress toward this goal during the first ten years of this Program.
