Year 4
The goal of UC, Santa Barbara’s Research Mentorship Program (RMP) is to excite precollege students about scientific research by partnering them with a UC, Santa Barbara researcher or professor performing research. They spend their 6 weeks on campus learning research techniques and working directly with researchers. As such, the Creativity Grant was a perfect match for the program, particularly as UC, Santa Barbara is actively involved in stem cell research.
In this fourth year of the grant, UCSB was able to identify 10 such students for receipt of a CIRM stipend. These students do not perform the actual research, but instead, work under the tutelage of a stem cell scientist in helping with a component of the scientists’ research. Nine of the ten recipients were able to attend the CIRM Conference and Poster Session in San Francisco. Our survey feedback from students involved in CIRM was overwhelmingly positive. This year in particular, we saw that students were more involved with the creative aspect of the program by collaborating on multiple videos. The Research Mentorship Program will be following these students progress as they enter university in the next two years, to discover their chosen university as well as the majors they’ve selected.