Diversity Programs
The UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute strives to involve all people—regardless of race, class and gender—in our genomics-related research and scholarship. Our diversity programs are designed to encourage and assist underrepresented students to enter into STEM fields, and flourish in them. Our diversity programs include:
Research Mentoring Internship (RMI)
Students who participate in the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute Research Mentoring Internship (RMI) program can expect to gain a realistic picture of academic research careers based on actual experience in these roles. RMI exposes undergraduate students to the nature and rigors of a research environment under the close supervision of faculty mentoring.
Treehouse Undergraduate Bioinformatics Immersion (TUBI)
The UC Santa Cruz Treehouse Undergraduate Bioinformatics Immersion (TUBI) is a pediatric genomics research group for undergraduate students, run out of the Vaske lab as part of the Treehouse Childhood Cancer Initiative. TUBI researchers work on bioinformatics projects related to finding novel drug targets for pediatric cancer patients.
Bioinformatics Summer Bridge
This course is offered to incoming frosh and transfer students from underrepresented backgrounds to help them gain essential data science and coding skills prior to entering coursework. For more information, please email genomics.diversity@ucsc.edu.
Bioinformatics Short Course
The UC Santa Cruz Summer Short Course in Bioinformatics and Coding introduces community college students to essential data science skills for application in genomics, cancer research, and other biomedical applications. NO prior experience required! This training is offered 100% online and especially encourages scholarship applications from students who are members of populations that are historically underrepresented in higher education.
GREAT Mentoring Program
The “Genome Research Experiences to Attract Talented Undergraduates into the Genomics Field to Enhance Diversity” (GREAT) program is an NIH-funded initiative that aims to provide students from diverse backgrounds with opportunities to conduct genomics-based research and receive career training from research-intensive universities such as UC Santa Cruz. This pilot program is currently only open to students from California State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB) to participate in an eight-week research program at UC Santa Cruz.
Project-Based Learning
Our Live Cell Biotechnology Discovery Lab is creating new technologies to bring hands-on laboratory experiments to classrooms around the world that would normally not have access to the resources it takes to conduct experiments with live cultures. We have implemented these technologies at Alisal High School, several classrooms in Latin America, and two undergraduate courses and we are working on expanding these hands-on learning opportunities to as many students as possible.
For questions about our diversity programs, please contact genomics.diversity@ucsc.edu.