Laboratory of Michael Summers 1999

The Meyerhoff Scholars undergraduate program has been very successful since its inception 12 years ago. There have been 234 students who have graduated the program with 169 currently enrolled in graduate and/or professional school.

The following Meyerhoff/MARC U*STAR scholars worked in the laboratory of Michael Summers and graduated in 1999:

First Row:

Dinari Harris, University of Michigan, Ph.D.; Chika Madu, University of Michigan, MD/Ph.D.; Daniel Klein, Yale University, Ph.D.

Second Row:

Ryan Turner, Harvard University, MD/Ph.D.; Danielle Smith, Yale University, MD/Ph.D.; Cylburn Soden, Jr.., Washington University, MD; Rebecca Meier, Yale University, Ph.D.; Brian Turner, Harvard University, MD/Ph.D.; Chelsea Stallings, University of Pennsylvania, MD/Ph.D., Michael Summers, HHMI Investigator at UMBC

Meyerhoff Applications by Major

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001

BIOL CHEM PSYC MENG

•In 1996 UMBC received an IMSD grant from the NIH with the goal of increasing the number of underrepresented students receiving their Ph.D.’s in the biomedical field. This program was named the Meyerhoff Graduate Fellows program and followed the key concepts of the successful undergraduate program.

•At inception of the graduate program there were only two students who applied to the program.

•Increased outreach efforts have produced an increased number of Ph.D. applications in the departments supported by the NIH IMSD Program with a high of 27 in 1999 and a current number of 22 for six available positions.

Total Meyerhoff Enrollment

01234567891011

1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001

BIOL CHEM PSYC MENG

•Student enrollment in the participating departments has increased dramatically since the IMSD Program’s inception.

•Overall, including Fall 2001, there will be 26 students who enrolled in the IMSD Program.

Total Underrepresented Minority Enrollment by Department

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

BIOL CHEM PSYC MENG

1995

2001

•Underrepresented minority enrollment in Ph.D. programs at UMBC has increased dramatically since the program’s inception.

•In Fall of 1995 there were only 9 underrepresented minority Ph.D. students in the participating departments and in the Fall of 2001 there will be 32 Ph.D. students in the four departments supported by the IMSD grant. The IMSD Program has the capacity to support 26 of these students.

Meyerhoff Student Retention

5

20

2

15

02468

101214161820

Enrolled Retained

Pre-IMSD Post-IMSD

•Prior to the IMSD Program at UMBC only 5 students were enrolled in the four participating departments, with only 2 successfully completing their progress toward their Ph.D .

•Since the program’s inception, 20 students have enrolled and 15 continue to make satisfactory progress toward their Ph.D. Of the 5 students who left the program only 2 left due to poor academic progress, the others left due to personal reasons.

What can we continue to do...

Faculty Solicit seed money from administration to hire administrative personnel to go to high schools and

aggressively recruit high-achieving African Americans in SEM fields. The administrative personnel can secure funding in order to keep new programs operating.

Use seed money to reduce teaching loads of faculty who are interested in beginning programs to support underrepresented minority students in the SEM fields. Faculty can then use time to study existing successful programs and implement them on their home campus.

Administrators Identify research funded faculty with high profiles and recruit one or more of them to spearhead efforts on

campus. Generally, administrators will not have difficulty finding interested faculty members. Provide seed money to these faculty to enable them to be effective (see above).

National Institutes of Health Continue to be flexible with how money is used to support programs including changing MARC programs to

be administered at all universities capable of increasing the numbers of underrepresented minorities in SEM fields.

Increase the amount of money to support an untapped resource - minority undergraduates conducting research. Scientists supported with R01 funding can only use supplemental money for one or two underrepresented minority graduate students. The problem is there are so few underrepresented minority graduate students that many mentors have none in their laboratories and this money goes unused.

Streamline the mechanism to obtain funding for underrepresented minority students. Currently, the paperwork to obtain supplemental funding for graduate students is cumbersome and with the small amount of money requested for undergraduate students this paperwork would make the process inaccessible for most research mentors.