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With grant support from the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Awards to Stimulate and Support Undergraduate Research Experiences (ASSURE) program funded by the Department of Defense (DoD) Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), we established a program intended to increase the number of underrepresented racial and ethnic minority (URM) and first-generation undergraduate students successfully applying to neuroscience and other STEM-related graduate programs. The Neuroscience Techniques and Research Training (NeuroSTART) Program aimed to increase the number of undergraduate students from the Memphis area involved in behavioral neuroscience research. In this two-semester program, students completed an empirical research project in a neuroscience lab, received individual mentoring from neuroscience faculty, became part of a STEM network, presented at research conferences, and attended specialized professional development seminars. In two cohorts of 15 students, 4 are PhD students in neuroscience-related programs or in medical school (27%), 4 are employed in neuroscience-related research facilities (27%), 3 are employed as clinical assistants (20%), and 1 is employed in the IT field (7%). The remaining three recently graduated and are planning a gap year prior to applying for admission to grad/medical school. The Memphis NeuroSTART program has provided valuable training to participants, making them competitive applicants for jobs in the health sciences and for admittance into graduate neuroscience programs. By providing this training to first-generation and URM students, the broader impact of this program was an increase in the diversity of the health sciences workforce, particularly those specializing in neuroscience-related research and treatment.
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Undergraduate Perceptions on Attending Interdisciplinary Conferences
Attending computer science conferences can give students insight into the research process and how academic work is disseminated. This study examines undergraduate student perceptions about attending an interdisciplinary computational biology conference. The study was conducted over four academic years with a mix of participants who attended a conference as part of a course and participants who received an undergraduate travel award. Results from 70 students enrolled in nearly 30 different institutions indicate that attending conferences helped them learn about different careers, gave them a sense of what computational biology research entails, and provided insight into giving an effective oral presentation. We found that students who received a travel award felt more comfortable at the conferences than students who attended as part of a course. Based on these findings, we provide guidance about developing programs for undergraduate conference attendance.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1750981
- PAR ID:
- 10621904
- Publisher / Repository:
- Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges
- Date Published:
- Volume:
- 40
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 1937-4771
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Salem, OR
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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