Project Summary/Abstract
The University of California, Berkeley (UCB) is a world-class research institution with a large number of
biomedical science undergraduates who are underrepresented minority, are first-generation college students,
come from low-socio-economic backgrounds or are disabled. The overarching goal of the UCB MARC program
is to prepare highly motivated students from these underrepresented (UR) groups to apply and succeed in Ph.D.
programs, helping to address the nation's need for a diverse scientific workforce. The program will address
barriers that deter UR students from pursuing research careers using three strategies. First, the program will
place students in labs run by PIs known for their scientific rigor and undergraduate mentoring skills. Second, the
program will provide a series of scientific and professional development workshops, journal clubs and research
seminars that will enhance the trainees' written and oral communication skills, their ability to ask important
scientific questions and to design rigorous experiments to address these questions, and to critically evaluate the
scientific findings. Third, the program will build a cohort of students and mentors who will support each other and
help the trainees achieve their career goals. Together, these strategies will enhance the self-efficacy and science
identity of the trainees and produce a group of gritty and rigorous young scientists with promising futures. The
program will engage evaluation and assessment tools to ensure that these strategies are successful in achieving
the its goals and to provide the flexibility to improve the program as it evolves.
The program will support UR junior and senior students with an intention to pursue a Ph.D. in the biomedical
sciences. Over the course of this five-year grant, we propose to support 78 MARC Scholars. Our goal is to have
>75% of MARC Scholars to matriculate into Ph.D. programs within two years of graduation from UCB. The
proposed MARC Program will also serve as a model for programs seeking to increase diversity and support the
success of undergraduate students from UR groups in research careers and share best practices with programs
that have overlapping goals.