POTSDAM — Clarkson University is one of seven partner institutions of New York State's Upstate Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (ULSAMP) that has been awarded a National Science Foundation grant to strengthen the pipeline between two- and four-year institutions.

Since 2007, the seven partner institutions of New York State's Upstate Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (Clarkson University, Cornell University, Monroe Community College, Onondaga Community College, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Rochester Institute of Technology, and Syracuse University) have developed activities to recruit and retain under-represented minority (URM) students into science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programs of study and careers.

The ULSAMP project goal is to collectively graduate 860 STEM URM students per year by the end of the upcoming five-year project period, a 40 percent increase over 2015-2016, by improving the recruitment, academic success, and persistence of URM students in STEM majors. In particular, the alliance's goal is to expand, refine and study best practices for preparing community college students for successful transition into four-year STEM programs.

At Clarkson, led by principal investigator Cathy McNamara and site coordinator Marjorie Warden, the program provides exciting opportunities for undergraduate research as a catalyst to build pathways for our students and create a pipeline to produce global researchers and scholars.

The alliance activities will be enhanced by undertaking a research study to investigate the role of research experiences, faculty mentoring and the community college pipeline on the persistence and graduation of URM students and the implications of these initiatives for increasing representation of URM students in STEM.