The NEUROCITY Initiative: Empowering Underrepresented Scholars to Pursue Careers in Neuroscience - PROJECT SUMMARY / ABSTRACT NEUROCITY is an innovative and transformational program hosted by the University of Rochester (UR) that is focused on training promising undergraduate students from the City University of New York (CUNY), one of the largest university systems in the United States that educates students from underprivileged and underrepresented groups. The overarching goal of NEUROCITY is to develop well-rounded and technically- skilled undergraduate researchers who are highly competitive for top-rated neuroscience PhD programs. NEUROCITY emerged in 2021 from a partnership between faculty at UR and the City College of New York (CCNY), one of the 25 colleges that comprise the CUNY system. In NEUROCITY, scholars engage in a hands- on research training program in established laboratories at UR during the summer, and participate in a series of career and professional development seminars and workshops that prepare students for navigating the many challenges and barriers that are faced in graduate school. NEUROCITY has helped CCNY students make major leaps into higher-end education, such as admissions to Ph.D. programs at R1 institutions. In this proposal, we expand the NEUROCITY experience to provide more continuous research, mentoring, and career development opportunities to all undergraduate students from the CUNY system. We build on the success of NEUROCITY through three foundational aims: (1) Provide an immersive research and mentoring experience. NEUROCITY Scholars actively participate in a series of research activities at UR that provides them with critical research and analytical skills crucial for graduate school. (2) Provide a rigorous career development program. NEUROCITY scholars participate in numerous seminars, workshops, and networking events that are critical for their career and professional development. In particular, scholars will have the opportunity to attend the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) annual meeting, and present their work at the Diversity Poster Session of SfN. (3) Provide a continuous research and mentoring support network. NEUROCITY is unique in that it provides research and mentoring opportunities beyond the summer, delivering a more sustained experience that sharpens critical thinking and research skills, and leading to highly trained scholars who are more competitive for graduate school. Through these continued research, mentoring, and career development experiences, our scholars emerge as empowered and skilled professionals ready to make meaningful contributions to the field of neuroscience at the graduate level. Importantly, NEUROCITY employs a holistic selection approach to recruit students that have an excellent track record in the classroom and at the bench, as well as those students who show promise in neuroscience research, but have not had the opportunity to engage in research due to barriers in their personal lives (e.g., working after school to help support their households). As such, our selection process leads to a more inclusive and representative cohort of students from underprivileged and underrepresented backgrounds.
