The Florida Georgia Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (FGLSAMP) is establishing a 2018-2020 Bridge to the Doctorate (BD) site at Florida International University (FIU) to increase the number of LSAMP doctoral degree awardees. The program will train the BD fellows to a doctoral degree and encourage them to transition into a career in academia to serve as a role model for other students. FIU, has a proven record of recruiting, retaining and graduating minority students in STEM. The FGLSAMP-FIU site addresses the National Challenge of "increasing the participation and success of underrepresented minorities in S&E contributes and to the health of the nation by expanding the S&E talent pool, enhancing innovation, and improving the nation's global economic leadership."FIU proposes a multi-faceted, student-centered initiative that will leverage the past successes of FGLSAMP in fostering high academic achievement amongst underrepresented students in STEM, and the "best practices" of fifteen prior FGLSAMP BD cohorts at FIU, FSU, UF, and USF that have supported over 200 minority graduate students. The objectives of the proposed program are: 1) recruit and place LSAMP undergraduates into STEM PhD programs at FIU, 2) ensure successful dissertation research and training for all BD fellows; 3) provide structured professional development activities to develop a strong learning community, support network of "like-minded" minority scholars, and promote their successful retention in a STEM doctoral program; 4) educate fellows for the global STEM workforce through extended national lab and international research experiences, 5) provide guided mentoring for the success of BD fellows, and 6) engage BD fellows in K-12 outreach, teaching, and near-peer mentoring of LSAMP undergraduates that will enable them to inspire the next generation of minority scientists and engineers.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
