Pathways to success

Minorities long have been underrepresented in the fields of science and engineering; in recent years, for example, only about 6 percent of all doctorates conferred in those fields were awarded to minority candidates. The Career Opportunities in Research Education and Training (COR) Program - formerly known as the Minority Access to Research Careers (MARC) Program - was established by the National Institute of Mental Health to encourage minority students to choose science careers and, particularly, careers in the fields of mental health and mental illness. The COR Program provides funds to colleges and universities with high proportions of minority students in order to train future scientists by pairing undergraduates with working scientists, researchers, and educators in the students' areas of interest. The undergraduate-and-mentor pairs then conduct real-world research and document the results in the form of scientific papers. Pathways to Success is a compilation of papers from twenty-two such research studies conducted in NIMH-COR programs located around the United States.