Chair and Professor of Psychology Robert Melara
The Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership and the Office of Experiential Learning at The City College of New York have been awarded a three-year, nearly $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to increase the pipeline of minority psychology researchers.
The $986,270 grant program, CUNY Advancement in Undergraduate STEM Education (CAUSE) is an initiative of the City College of New York and the Borough of Manhattan Community College. Focused on the field of clinical and translational psychology, CAUSE aims to increase the number of Hispanic, low-income, and other minoritized students in the fields of clinical and translational psychology.
Psychology is the largest undergraduate major at CCNY, a Hispanic Serving Institution, yet the field remains overwhelmingly White; only eight percent of psychologists in the U.S. workforce were Hispanic, five percent were Black or African-American, and three percent were Asian, the American Psychological Association reported in 2021.
Through CAUSE, CCNY hopes to address this issue by exposing underrepresented groups to the field early in their academic careers through various experiences and research opportunities. These are designed to increase the number of these targeted students who continue on to graduate school and/or ultimately enter research careers in psychology.
CAUSE will create a pipeline of programs for these populations by expanding its existing partnership with BMCC. That program, Bridges to Baccalaureate, is a two-year scholarship that allows minority-serving institution BMCC’s aspiring biomedical and behavioral sciences students to progress to CCNY, where they are able to earn an undergraduate degree in a STEM field.
“The general goal is to expose students to research, to retain them, and to build their research identity,” said Chair and Professor of Psychology Robert Melara, who is the grant director and principal investigator of Bridges to Baccalaureate. “This program is designed to reach them earlier in the pipeline so that they can attain research self-efficacy.”
Each year, 200 students (100 from each of CCNY and BMCC) will participate in a semester-long Learning Community course. Focused on career exploration, the course includes lab visits, an introduction to research culture and processes, and career/soft skills development. The program will be integrated into existing academic offerings as a three-credit course at CCNY, and a one-credit elective at BMCC.
Eighty students, 40 from each institution, will participate in an introduction to research course (Research in Psychology at BMCC and Experimental Psychology at CCNY). Five from each institution will then be selected as summer research interns with CCNY faculty.
The initial 200-student cohort is expected to be enrolled in Fall 2025. Once fully operational, CAUSE is expected to engage 350 students over four years.
About The City College of New York
Since 1847, The City College of New York has provided a high-quality and affordable education to generations of New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. CCNY embraces its position at the forefront of social change. It is ranked #1 by the Harvard-based Opportunity Insights out of 369 selective public colleges in the United States on the overall mobility index. This measure reflects both access and outcomes, representing the likelihood that a student at CCNY can move up two or more income quintiles. Education research organization Degree Choices ranks CCNY #1 nationally among universities for economic return on investment. In addition, the Center for World University Rankings places CCNY in the top 1.8% of universities worldwide in terms of academic excellence. Labor analytics firm Lightcast puts at $3.2 billion CCNY’s annual economic impact on the regional economy (5 boroughs and 5 adjacent counties) and quantifies the “for dollar” return on investment to students, taxpayers and society. At City College, more than 15,000 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in eight schools and divisions, driven by significant funded research, creativity and scholarship. In 2023, CCNY launched its most expansive fundraising campaign, ever. The campaign, titled “Doing Remarkable Things Together” seeks to bring the College’s Foundation to more than $1 billion in total assets in support of the College mission. CCNY is as diverse, dynamic and visionary as New York City itself. View CCNY Media Kit.
Syd Steinhardt
212-650-7875
ssteinhardt1@ccny.cuny.edu