This award provides funds to the Neuroscience and Behavior Program at the University of Massachusetts to establish a Research Experiences for Undergraduates Site. This program will take advantage of a unique neuroscience community that exists in this regional site. Neuroscientists at each of five colleges in the Amherst area are members of the University of Massachusetts Neuroscience and Behavior Program (NSB). This program will bring undergraduates into a laboratory environment where they will become members of a research team. This approach will facilitate the development of mentor-protege relationships, which may have a profound and long-lasting affect on career choices. The Program will consist of an eight-week research project in one of the laboratories. The laboratory work is designed to introduce students to one of the three specialty areas in neuroscience represented in the NSB Program; Learning and Behavior Neuroendocrinology, and Neurodevelopment. In addition to their laboratory work, students will attend a series of weekly workshops designed to provide an overview of neuroscience by introducing the knowledge and technology of laboratories outside the one in which the student works. In this way REU students will become familiar with a broad segment of neuroscience and thus be better prepared to choose careers in the neurosciences. The REU program will be followed up by encouraging work in the home institutions. Qualified undergraduates will be recruited from the five local institutions as well as from the national undergraduate population. The program will focus special attention on recruiting groups that are under-represented in science - women and minorities. In addition, personal contacts with faculty at a number of institutions with large minority populations have agreed to help identify qualified minority undergraduates for the program. Since the REU faculty is made up of 28% women and minorities, appropriate role models and mentors will be available for all participants.
