MARC at San Diego State University

PROJECT SUMMARY A creative, innovative biomedical workforce depends on diverse teams lead by PhD scientists trained in technical skills and culturally-aware people skills. The United States’ population of historically excluded groups, which include those from underrepresented minorities (URMs), disadvantaged backgrounds, and/or those with disabilities, is growing, corresponding to an increased interest in STEM fields. However, barriers to equity and access have led to lower rates of entry into PhD programs and scientific careers by minoritized groups. With the growing complexity and urgency of the health and well-being challenges facing our country, we simply cannot afford to continue to exclude underrepresented groups from the research enterprise. Here, we propose to support 16 Maximizing Access to Research Careers (MARC) scholars at San Diego State University (SDSU) with research-validated supportive programming and faculty-mentored research experiences to develop critical thinking, communication, leadership, interpersonal, technical, and resiliency skills. All MARC experiences are developed through a culturally aware lens that seeks to build scholars’ sense of belonging, support their mental health and wellness, and provides a culturally congruent and scientifically stimulating academic home. Here, we are building on 33 successful years of our SDSU MARC program by introducing new partnerships with campus Cultural Centers and disability services for recruitment and programming synergy, introducing a new near-peer mentoring program to combat barriers to success in graduate programs, providing dedicated mentor training within a cultural context that empowers faculty mentors to promote the development, self-efficacy, and independence of their MARC scholars, and responding to scholar needs with new programming. We continue to use evidence-based evaluation data to improve our MARC and pre-MARC programming to prioritize student success and support, which we intend will only grow our success of scholars entering and completing PhD programs. Our workshops, panels, seminars, coursework, and socials have been developed to build critical thinking and quantitative skills, oral and written communication, ethics, reproducibility and rigor, leadership, mental health and resiliency, self-efficacy, and a sense of belonging. We assess all programming through evaluation methods to ensure our program is always improving in terms of rigor, support, efficiency, and success so that MARC scholars are prepared to enter and complete graduate programs. By leveraging key partnerships at SDSU, we are able to synergize our infrastructure, programming, coursework, and mentorship relationships so that we may expand our impact far beyond the requested 16 slots to provide instruction, discussion, and inspiration for historically excluded STEM students and their allies across campus.