About Us
Our goal is to enhance recruitment, retention, graduation and graduate school matriculation for Under-represented Minority(URM) students through a strategic combination of cutting-edge nanofiber research and tailored professional development opportunities.
The UTRGV team envisions the PREM program to be a formal venue to facilitate the development of long-term materials research and education programs. This highly interdisciplinary center will pool the resources of talented junior and senior faculty from seven departments within UTRGV into the development of materials, devices and system analysis. In addition to research support, the UTRGV-UMN PREM team will facilitate this goal with regular seminars, research group meetings, multiple exchange visits, and access to instrumentation. The results will include increases in external funding, refereed reviewed publications, undergraduate (UG) students entering graduate school and UG students entering the workforce in materials science areas. As for recruitment and retention, proven strategies will be used since the past success rate has been 100% for PREM UG students.
The UTRGV/UMN partnership will provide, inter alia, technical expertise, access to a broad range of instrumentation for advanced materials characterization, student and faculty exchanges, seminars, and access to industrial collaboration. PREM 2015 will take advantage of the technical and proven successes in education, mentoring and supervision of UG and MS students to achieve PREM’s goals of developing a global materials science research enterprise with a high level of scholarly achievement, while increasing the number of underrepresented minorities in STEM careers.
Accomplishments
- Graduated 245 students (183 UG and 62 MS) >25% Female
- 51% of graduates pursued graduate school at UTRGV, Rice U, Texas A&M, Vanderbilt U, Georgia Tech, UMN, and Tufts
- 211 peer-reviewed journal articles/proceedings
- 372 oral and poster presentations
- 12 patent/patent applications
- Provided the platform for the 1st PhD in the College of Engineering and Computer Science
- 49 UG students participated in the UMN REU, 21% pursued graduate school, 20% PhD degrees (100% Hispanics)
- The PREM achieved 100% retention and graduation of participants
Current Goals
- Enable the 1st PhD program at UTRGV within COEC
- Promote UTRGV as a learner-centered research institution by strengthening programs and pathways toward future careers in MS&E
- Enhance the technical partnership with UMN through continued interactions and exchange that foster joint success in research, education, and outreach
- Continue to build the pipeline of minority students in MS&E graduate programs. To date, 51% of our PREM UG researchers (91 out of a total of 179) have matriculated into a STEM graduate program. Notably, 29 students are/have pursued PhD and 9 MD degrees (10 have received PhD and 6 MD degrees).
- Increase technological and scientific awareness across the K-12 and broader RGV community
PREM Benefits
- Research project (M&S and access to high-tech instrumentation)
- Salary
- Entrepreneurship, Financial, Ethics, oral/written communication, and overall professional development workshops
- Travel to technical conferences
- Interaction with UMN faculty/students and access to UMN shared facilities
Funded by the National Science Foundation through the University of Minnesota (UMN) Partnership for Research and Education in Materials Science (PREM): University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) award DMR-2122178.