The goal of this study was to assess the NSF- Undergraduate Research and Mentoring Program awarded to the Department of Biological Sciences at Florida Atlantic University. FAU is a R1 minority institution and many of our undergraduate students are local residents. This program was started in 2009 and consisted of a two-year experience where 30 undergraduate students were funded to conduct research within research laboratories at FAU. The novelty of the program was its tiered mentoring structure, where students would be mentored by their faculty research mentors regarding the development of their projects, and by the Pi’s of this program on the academic aspects of their research experiences. This program was designed to be an intensive short-term graduate experience and prepared students for graduate programs. The objectives of this study were to assess the undergraduate student’s research experience and their future career choices after graduation. We conducted yearly assessments of the program by asking students to anonymously answer questionnaires developed by the Pi’s, the SURE survey and we tracked the students’ career choices after graduation.
Results/Conclusions
The pool of 30 undergraduate students’ from this program consisted: 30% Africa American, 33% Hispanics, 7 % Asians who were the first generation attending college, 3% Asians, 7% students with disabilities, 11% Caucasians who were the first generation attending college and 15 % Caucasians. Their educational background consisted of 10% FAU High School, 57% FAU sophomores, and 33% were transfer students from local Colleges. Twenty seven students completed the program (90%), and 3 dropped out of the program (10%). But all students graduated by 2014. The average graduating GPA was 3.84. Students presented their posters at one international conference, seven national conferences, 15 regional conferences, and over 10 local conferences. They published eight research papers in peer-reviewed journals and three in the FAU Undergraduate Journal. Their career choices consisted of enrolling in the following programs: 23% in Master programs; 33% in PhD programs, 27% in Medical programs, 10% in health related graduate programs and 7% are working in technical positions. They accumulated US$5,730.00 in travels grants, and US$9,800.00 in research grants. In the SURE II survey our students scored 0.5 to 1.0 higher in the all the Learning Gains studied compared to all other students in the country for 2013-2014.