Botany and Plant Sciences Faculty receive grant to fund new summer GRaPEs initiative to prepare undergraduates for graduate school
Dr. Paul Nabity, an assistant professor, in Botany and Plant Sciences in collaboration with Dr. Sarah Melissa Witiak, an associate professor at Virginia State University (VSU) received a grant from the University of California-Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or UC-HBCU, Initiative to provide undergraduate students with an enriching research experience and lay the foundation for a pipeline from HBCUs to graduate studies at UC Riverside. The new GRaPEs (Graduate Research and Preparation Experiences) initiative will cleverly leverage the existing research of Drs. Nabity and Witiak in native grapes. Co-PIs that will serve as mentors during the program include Professors Andrea Beyer and Brian Sayre from VSU, and Janet Franklin, Loralee Larios, Amy Litt, and Dawn Nagel from BPSC.
“This is an exciting opportunity to strengthen our graduate program in plant biology. We have
assembled a fantastic team that spans levels of biological organization and partnered with a proven success story here in BPSC with the CePCeB REU. Our ultimate goal is to identify how we can sustain this type of program over the next several years. This will be determined by successful preparation and presentation of laboratory research at both the CePCeB symposium and ERN conference, application to graduate school and extramural funding opportunities, and admission of each student to at least one graduate program,” says Dr. Nabity
Undergraduate interns will receive mentorship from VSU and UCR for the duration of the project, culminating in a trip to Washington DC to present at the Emerging Researchers National (ERN) conference. Interns will visit UCR during the summer to conduct their own research project under the mentorship of faculty, a graduate student mentor, and in partnership with the CePCeB REU (https://cepceb.ucr.edu/reu/).
“We are very excited to join with UCR this summer. The best way to recruit students to research careers is to get them in the lab, working on questions that don’t yet have answers with mentors and peers who are supportive and excited about the research process. There are few moments more memorable than that first realization that you are the first person in the whole history of the world to know something that was unknown,” says Dr. Witiak.
This summer experience will provide the interns with weekly engagement to increase their academic capital to successfully navigate graduate studies, such as writing and presenting on science, applying for graduate study and financial support of graduate study, team building, and social/networking activities. “At each point in the program, students will have mentors to guide them, from their first introduction to their projects, to lab work and presentation skills, and show them how to navigate their first large scientific conference,” says Dr. Witiak
The goal of this unique program is to create a network of VSU students who can share their UCR experiences with others and encourage them to apply to graduate programs at UCR. Dr. Witiak is also hopeful that “the cross-pollination between the two institutions can lead to long term relationships in research and mentoring for the faculty as well.”
Author: Loralee Larios
October 11, 2021