UNM Receives Grants from National Institutes of Health for PREP & IMSD Programs

The Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico has received two grants in con­tin­ued sup­port of its PREP and IMSD Pro­grams in the Depart­ment of Biol­ogy. The grants, total­ing nearly $5 mil­lion over four years, were awarded through the National Insti­tutes of Health (NIH).

The PREP or Post­bac­calau­re­ate Research and Edu­ca­tion Pro­gram is under the direc­tion of Biol­ogy Chair Richard Cripps, while the IMSD or the Ini­tia­tive to Max­i­mize Stu­dent Diver­sity is led by Regents’ Pro­fes­sor and Prin­ci­pal Inves­ti­ga­tor Mag­gie Werner-Washburne.

PREP helps to sup­port under-represented stu­dents gain research expe­ri­ence after their Bachelor’s degrees, in order that they can pre­pare for suc­cess­ful entry into a grad­u­ate pro­gram. PREP is par­tic­u­larly focused upon those stu­dents that did not gain much research expe­ri­ence as under­grad­u­ates, and pro­vides full-time expe­ri­ence in research lab­o­ra­to­ries in order to enhance research credentials.

“We are thrilled that the NIH has decided to fund for four more years our post­bac­calau­re­ate train­ing pro­gram,” said Cripps. “Over the last four years, 16 PREP Schol­ars have been accepted to promi­nent grad­u­ate pro­grams around the coun­try, and sev­eral of our alumni have now grad­u­ated with their Ph.D.s. Through train­ing these indi­vid­u­als and sup­port­ing their sci­en­tific careers, we will con­tribute to the sig­nif­i­cant diver­si­fi­ca­tion of the fac­ulty of this country.”

The goals for the PREP pro­gram include iden­ti­fy­ing a cadre of qual­i­fied post-baccalaureate schol­ars, specif­i­cally minor­ity BS/BA grad­u­ates, who chose to post­pone grad­u­ate stud­ies and to recruit them into the PREP pro­gram before they give up the idea of pur­su­ing a grad­u­ate level career; pro­vid­ing these schol­ars with research and train­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties that will give them the skills; gen­er­at­ing the con­fi­dence and time needed to pre­pare for grad­u­ate stud­ies; and facil­i­tat­ing appli­ca­tion and accep­tance into a bio­med­ical related grad­u­ate program.

IMSD is a pre-Ph.D. diver­sity pro­gram that sup­ports research expe­ri­ences and per­sonal devel­op­ment for under­grad­u­ate minor­ity stu­dents to reach their goals. Stu­dents involved in the pro­gram are work­ing toward degrees in biol­ogy, bio­chem­istry, chem­istry, com­puter sci­ences, com­puter engi­neer­ing, chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing and psy­chol­ogy. IMSD has pro­duced sig­nif­i­cant results in every area of bio­med­ical research.

IMSD has pro­duced almost 30 Ph.D.s since 2004 and, typ­i­cally, more than 80 per­cent of IMSD grad­u­at­ing seniors go on to grad­u­ate school each year. Cur­rently, there are about 50 stu­dents work­ing on their Ph.D.s from Har­vard to the Uni­ver­sity of Wash­ing­ton and around the coun­try that have matric­u­lated from these UNM programs.

Because the men­tor­ing pro­gram was work­ing so well with juniors and seniors, and the grad­u­a­tion rate for Native Amer­i­can stu­dents was so low, IMSD now sup­ports Gate­way Men­tor­ing Groups that pro­vide the pro­gram to about 25 fresh­men, sopho­mores, and trans­fer stu­dents from rural areas, pueb­los and reser­va­tions who are inter­ested in majors related to the STEM fields.

“Our pro­gram focuses on a set of prin­ci­ples, start­ing with “know your heart,” Werner-Washburne said. “The goal of the pro­gram at every level is to train vision­ary, gen­er­ous lead­ers and cre­ative scientists.”

Since the found­ing of the Minor­ity Bio-Medical Research Sup­port (MBRS) pro­gram at the UNM in 1972, and it’s renam­ing as Ini­tia­tives to Max­i­mize Stu­dent Diver­sity 12 years ago, more than 1000 grad­u­ate and under­grad­u­ate stu­dents at UNM have received sup­port to work with fac­ulty men­tors, con­duct sci­en­tific research and launch their careers.

Media Con­tact: Steve Carr (505) 277‑1821; email: scarr@unm.edu