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March 10, 1997

UCSC receives renewed funding for minority science support program

By Robert Irion

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has renewed its support of a University of California effort to increase the number of science degrees awarded to underrepresented minority students. Called the California Alliance for Minority Participation (CAMP), the initiative has drawn $1 million per year from NSF since its inception in 1992. Now, NSF has committed to the same annual level of funding for five more years.

As one of eight regional centers for the project, UC Santa Cruz will receive $75,000 of the federal funds to continue its own CAMP programs in 1997. A further pledge of $25,000 from the UC Regents' Diversity Initiative fund will give the campus $100,000 for its innovative CAMP activities.

"CAMP is one of the country's most successful alliances for minority participation in the sciences," said associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry Glenn Millhauser, the program's regional director at UCSC. "We have come up with several uses of CAMP funding at UCSC that we feel have helped our students succeed in their science educations."

Those uses are as follows:

Headquartered at UC Irvine, CAMP funds the participation of about 2,000 students each year. The CAMP regional centers, based at the eight general-education UC campuses, share the goal of doubling the number of California minority students with degrees in science and engineering. Recent statistics show that those numbers are indeed rising. For instance, the number of minority science graduates from the University of California rose from 573 in 1989-90 to 896 in 1994-95. At UCSC, the numbers increased from 42 to 89 in those same years.

However, Millhauser said, it's impossible to isolate the possible effects of CAMP from many other ongoing campus efforts. Those programs, many of which have existed for more than a decade, include ACE, Minority Access to Research Careers (MARC) and Minority Biomedical Research Support (MBRS), Minority International Research Training (MIRT), special initiatives sponsored by the Computer Engineering and Chemistry and Biochemistry Departments, and other activities offered through UCSC's Educational Opportunity Programs Office.


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