MPC2SC: Bridging Monterey Peninsula College (MPC) Students to UC Santa Cruz (UCSC) Bachelor's Degrees and Biomedical Research Careers

About This Grant

PROJECT SUMMARY: Students from historically minoritized backgrounds with a variety of lived experiences often struggle to navigate the hidden curriculum of academia towards achieving careers in biomedical science. Additionally, the transfer student experience can be isolating in that students develop a cohort and near peer network in an intimate community college setting and then must reestablish a support network while taking on challenging upper division coursework. With support and community building, these barriers can be overcome. Therefore, we are building off our historic success established by our previous R25 B2B ACCESS program (1994-2024) to build the T34 B2B program (MPC2SC) at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) which aims to recruit, retain, and prepare historically minoritized students from Monterey Peninsula College (MPC) for biomedical bachelor’s degrees and entry into PhD programs or the biomedical research workforce. A major change to our program will be the integration with the UCSC STEM Diversity office which houses established programs such as MARC, CAMP, and UCLEADS. These undergraduate focused programs allow us to leverage a strong, established community of minoritized scholars with a focus and celebration of the intersectionality of their identities. We will systematically guide our B2B scholars through the MPC to UCSC transition by offering seminars, workshops, and 8-week summer research experiences (SRE) at UCSC to develop essential skills and conduct research and demystifying the ‘hidden curriculum’. We have run a R25 program (ACCESS) for 30 years, so we are excited to leverage its successes for our new T34 program. Our objectives are to: 1. Strengthen the partnership with MPC to increase acceptance and retention rates by supporting an annual cohort of ten MPC2SC students, targeting a 100% retention rate from MPC to UCSC. 2. Ensure 100% of MPC2SC fellows develop independent research skills through placements in UCSC labs committed to undergraduate training and requiring each student will be highly encouraged to apply for an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP) application. 3. Achieve a 100% completion rate for biomedical 5-year bachelor’s degrees among fellows and ensure at least 75% will apply to a biomedical graduate program. We anticipate that the other 25% of the students will pursue biomedical research careers or further postbaccalaureate training opportunities. Our core leadership team comprises PI Holman (Co-Director of ACCESS 2019-2024), MPI Sanchez (Advisory role, ACCESS 2021-2024), MPI Turner (ACCESS faculty, 2014-2024), MPI Gilbert (ACCESS faculty, 2020-2024) and Yulianna Ortega (STEM diversity director), who work closely to transition the R25 to the T34 program, ensuring these goals are met.