Each Issue of DIVERSITY EXCHANGE MAGAZINE features a symposium on a topical subject of interest not only to Florida International University (FIU), but to higher education in the United States and globally. Recent symposia have dealt with preparing students and the academy in the new millennium and a special issue dealing with the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorism tragedy.

The symposium in this issue of Diversity Exchange deals with the subject of research and student-faculty research collaboration. It features several articles written by students, and some co-written with faculty, concerning various research projects in which they have been involved at FIU. These articles are especially important to the subject of diversity given the shortage of minority scientists and researchers in the United States. According to Scott Smallwood in an article in the March 2003 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education, “In 2001, 1,006 people earned doctorates in mathematics at American Universities. Just 19 were African-American students. Just 15 were Hispanic-Americans.”

Noting that in the West, scientists are predominantly white and male, in another article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Muriel Lederman wrote: “One benefit of a new sciencepedagogy might be to encourage women and members of minority groups to study science in college and graduate school, by making its culture easier to understand and thus less forbidding.”

Florida International University is continuing to address this issue. For the past 18 years, the university has offered the federally- supported program, MBRS RISE (Minority Biomedical Research Support Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement) and now offers a second, MARC U-STAR (Minority Access to Research Careers Undergraduate Student Training in Academic Research). MBRS RISE is funded over the next four years for $3,878,498 by the National Institute of Health. MARC U-STAR is funded for $748,000 for five years.

The purpose of the MBRS RISE Program is to enhance the research environment at minority-serving institutions and increase the interest, skills, and competitiveness of students and faculty in pursuit of biomedical research careers. Under the direction of Charles H. Bigger, a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, this program is open to both undergraduate and graduate students. MARC U-STAR is open to only undergraduate juniors and seniors and is under the direction of Ophelia I. Weeks, from the same department.

Additionally, the Division of Student Affairs was awarded a Ronald E. McNair Post-baccalaureate Achievement grant totaling $880,000 over four years by the U.S. Department of Education to encourage the preparation and entry of undergraduate students in masters and doctoral programs in science and engineering. Specifically, the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement program awards grants to institutions of higher education for projects designed to prepare participants for doctoral studies through involvement in research and other scholarly activities. The goal of McNair is to increase the attainment of the Ph.D. by students from underrepresented segments of society.

The grant allows for 22 carefully selected juniors and seniors to be mentored and work alongside FIU faculty currently engaged in high-level research in the fields of engineering and the sciences. It is expected that FIU will work closely with these students through their undergraduate programs, encourage their entrance into graduate programs, and track their progress to successful completion of advance degrees. E. George Simms, director of Grants in the Division of Students Affairs, and Eric Crumpler, assistant professor in the Department of Engineering, oversee the grant.

The programs mentioned above are not the only ones that facilitate student research and faculty-student research collaboration, though. Smaller programs exist across the university, both in academic departments and in centers and institutes. Beyond these, FIU has become active in a network of research universities where the major emphasis is undergraduate research. That network is facilitated by the Reinvention Center based at Stony Brook University in New York. Moreover, in Spring 2004, FIU joined the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR), the premier organization dedicated to promoting undergraduate research at all universities, and was represented at CUR’s Tenth National Undergraduate Conference, held at the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse in June 2004.

In building on the Reinvention Center and CUR pursuits, The FIU Honors College inaugurated its Student Research and Artistic Initiatives (SRAI) Program in February 2004 with a Student Research Conference, where the keynote address was delivered by Sally Boysen, The Ohio State University Psychologist who is a worldrenown animal cognition specialist. Several students and faculty spoke at the conference about their research and about the opportunities and challenges of research collaboration. Some of the articles in this symposium reflect ideas presented at that conference. In terms of mission, SRAI is intended to promote and facilitate student engagement in research and other creative activities in order to demystify research, increase knowledge about its nature and methodologies, and secure competitive advantage for graduate school and the workforce.

The following articles outline many of the experiences students have had in conducting research with faculty as well as sentiments expressed by faculty regarding the importance of faculty conducting research with students. Hopefully, many
of these students as well as those involved in the McNair, MBRS RISE, and MARC U-STAR, SRAI, and other programs will continue to pursue careers in science, engineering, and technology and help alleviate the shortage of minorities entering these fields. Overall, though, it is our expectation that whatever their fields of endeavor, the students engaged in research and the faculty with whom they collaborate will reap multiple rewards in terms of the creation and dissemination of new knowledge and the development and pursuit of exciting careers.