MARC at the University of Nevada, Reno

The proposed MARC at the University of Nevada, Reno (MARC at UNR) will support diverse cohorts of trainees drawn from the five College of Science programs that train the majority of UNR undergraduates in biomedical research: Biology, Chemistry, Microbiology & Immunology, Neuroscience, and Psychology. We are requesting support for five trainees in the first year of the program and ten trainees per year in subsequent years. Each trainee will be supported through their junior and senior baccalaureate years. The diversity of the MARC at UNR will be supported by the racial/ethnic diversity of institution-wide undergraduate enrollment at UNR (22% Hispanic/Latinx, 3% Black/African American) and College of Science enrollment of over 50% underrepresented in biomedical and behavioral research. Currently, training support for these students is limited. The College of Science graduates 180 underrepresented students annually who have access to fewer than 16 training positions supported by the UNR McNair program and an NINDS R25. The research training of the trainees will be supported by extramural research awards held by our 30 Participating Faculty: $12 M in research funding from the NIH, NSF, and other agencies (mean=$403 K, median=$293 K per Trainer/Mentor). The MARC at UNR will complete the following objectives: 1) We will partner with UNR Advising and other diversity-enhancing programs to encourage students underrepresented in research to form an interest group/club that will serve as a “point of contact” through which our programs will inform underrepresented freshman and sophomores about opportunities for predoctoral graduate training, provide direction and access to mentoring and research opportunities, and support applications to our programs. 2) We will implement an Enrichment Program that will prepare the trainees to apply to, enter, and succeed in predoctoral studies in research-intensive institutions through hands-on training in laboratory safety, weekly seminar/discussion classes providing peer support in the preparation of applications for summer research, for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP), and for predoctoral graduate training. The Enrichment Program also includes regular and repeated exposure to concepts in the Responsible Conduct of Research and in Methods to Enhance Reproducibility in both didactic and discussion courses. 3) We will provide two years of formal, sustained mentoring support for our trainees using a Matrix Mentoring Model that includes trained faculty Trainer/Mentors, graduate student near-peer mentors, peer MARC trainees, self-mentoring, and staff mentoring. 4) We will provide mentored biomedical and behavioral research experiences to support applications to graduate programs in biomedical or behavioral research at research-intensive (T32) institutions. In addition, we will increase transparency by making information on program policies and recruitment activities, admissions, and post-training career outcomes of the graduates from the training program publicly available.