Intellectual merit: This project initiates a partnership with select inner-city high schools in St. Louis. It provides scholarships for a minimum of 13 academically talented, financially needy students (Scholars), enabling the Scholars to enroll in and complete a BA or BS degree in Biological Sciences at MU. High school students are recruited from underserved groups (economically disadvantaged students and those from groups currently underrepresented in the sciences) before their senior year in high school. They are encouraged and enabled to achieve their best academic performance in the last year(s) of their high school experience, and then provided direct academic and financial support while they are in college. The Scholars are being prepared to enter highly respected graduate programs in major research institutions in the life sciences. Throughout the Scholar's undergraduate program the following are emphasized: undergraduate research, the development of quantitative skills, and integrative approaches to critical problems in the life sciences.
Broader impacts: The partnership with select St. Louis inner city high schools assures full scholarship support for low-income students, especially members of groups currently underrepresented in the sciences. This collaboration is thus significantly increasing the number of low-income students and students from groups currently underrepresented in the sciences entering undergraduate programs and eventually earning advanced degree programs in science and will thus complement our current high school, undergraduate, post-baccalaureate and graduate programs, and is contributing to increasing the diversity and size of this nation's scholar talent pool in the biological sciences.
