This special award will give graduate student Lisa Avalos additional flexibility in pursuing her graduate studies and research initiation in sociology. The award will permit this student to make several trips to a research site for work preliminary to her dissertation. The topic of her work is the Cuban community in Miami and the relationship between the sources of division within the community (time of emigration, social and economic status, age) and both assimilation and ideological positioning. This award grows out of a special directorate level program to enhance the graduate education of previous applicants of minority fellowship programs receiving honorable mention ratings. This award should strengthen minority research participation in sociology.