• As part of the USC-HHMI Summer Research Program incoming students are partnered with high school students who have a year of research experience in the lab. This partnership has proven quite successful and has significantly increased the rate of learning for the first year research fellows.
• We produced and disbursed a brochure in both English and Spanish to introduce prospective students, especially those minority students currently underrepresented, to the STAR Program and the USC-HHMI Summer Research Program. We were able to raise our minority student enrollment to 52% by dispursing the brochure to both students and their parents at meetings and gatherings of minority students and special parent meeting.
• We found that 100% of STAR students go on to attend 4 year colleges and universities, 98% to upper tier universities and that the majority of STAR students are the first in their families to attend college. We further found that 81% of STAR students who have graduated from college have gone on to pursue graduate degrees, the majority of them in either medicine or the sciences. In addition, we are now seeing that 35% of current STAR students are the sibling or relative of a former STAR student.

• We found that students just coming into the laboratory for the first time were not prepared, despite training classes at their high school, to work in state of the art laboratories. We instituted a partnering of STAR I students with more experienced STAR II students who have a year of research experience in the lab. This partnership has proven quite successful and has significantly increased the rate of learning for the first year research fellows. It also had the added benefit of teaching STAR II how to become a mentor.
• The student population we serve is 54% minority status and 74% of the students fall below the poverty line according to federal guideline. We had economic representation parity within the STAR Program but we began to see a slight drop off in the number of minority students applying to enter the STAR Program. In order to reverse this trend immediately we produced and disbursed a brochure in both English and Spanish to introduce prospective students, especially those minority students currently underrepresented, to the STAR Program and the USC-HHMI Summer Research Program. We were able to raise our minority student enrollment to 52% by dispursing the brochure to both students and their parents at meetings and gatherings of minority students and special parent meeting where we explained the program and the benefits of participation. We also began recruiting students as freshman and advising them of the courses they would need take to prepare to become STAR students as juniors and seniors.
• Funding is ALWAYS a challenge. We simply keep looking for foundations who will support ongoing programs. We have not as yet been able to find any support for the adminstrative costs of the program.

• Brochure for recruiting students into STAR Program, particularly minority students.
• Web page detailing STAR Program

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