This is a competitive renewal of the Short-Term Research Training for Minority Students that we entitle """"""""Summer Minority Advanced Research Training (SMART)"""""""". This proposal continues a highly successful effort to encourage and recruit underrepresented minority undergraduate students to pursue careers in the biomedical sciences by providing a ten week summer traineeship in a research environment that focuses on chronic diseases that affect minority populations (e.g. cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension and glaucoma). This program involves a multidisciplinary approaching incorporating faculty from among the biomedical science division of the health science center. Trainees attend workshops and lectures on: Laboratory Safety and Practice, Animal handling and Animal Rights, Scientific Communications and Health disparity issues. Students will take a class on """"""""Introduction to cardiovascular science"""""""" and receive two hours of credit toward their degrees at their home institutions. Each student selects a research mentor from the participating faculty after reviewing their research programs and listening to faculty presentations. Students and faculty design and plan a research project that can be accomplished within the ten-week period. All students must complete an abstract suitable for submission and presentation at the National Minority Research Symposium that is held each fall. Students gain experience in 1) generating an hypothesis; 2) testing their hypothesis through research experimentation; 3) using new research methodology; 4) evaluating and analyzing data using computer techniques, and 5) presenting their findings in a written abstract and oral presentation at the end of the training period. Students also receive lectures and review case studies on the responsible conduct of research early on in their training program. The overall effect of these activities is to create a sense of becoming a member of the scientific research community. This sense is furthered by student participation in their mentor's research group and departmental weekly seminar meetings. Students and faculty mentors each evaluate the program and each other at the end of the program. An external evaluator is used to help assess the program process as well as program outcomes. Students will be tracked throughout their participation in the program and after by formal mailed questionnaires, email follow-ups and the use of a list serve. Students will be recruited to return to the McNair summer program, if still eligible, and for entry into graduate school. Success will be measured ultimately by the number of students who enter biomedical science graduate programs and research as careers.
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