The
National Institute of Mental Health - Career Opportunities in
Research Education and Training (NIMH-COR) Program is intended to
strengthen research and research training experiences in
scientific disciplines related to mental health. The NIMH-COR
Program is directed specifically to four-your colleges and
universities that serve substantial numbers of students of one or
more racial/ethnic minority groups, including African Americans,
Latinos, Native Americans, Alaskan Natives, Asians, and Pacific
Islanders. Persons belonging to these racially/ethnically defined
groups are underrepresented in biomedical and behavioral science
relevant to research in the mental health fields. An applicant
institution must propose a two-year NIMH-COR Program Honors
Undergraduate program for which six to ten highly talented third
and fourth year undergraduate students will be selected. Students
will be provided with special research training experiences
designed to improve their qualifications for entry into advanced
research training programs leading to a Ph.D. or M.D. research
career degree.
In 1993 the ADAMHA-MARC Program underwent an administrative change and became the NIMH-COR Program (National Institute of Mental Health - Career Opportunities in Research Education and Training Program). Since the late 1960s, U.S. Government programs, foundations and universities have been actively encouraging minority students to become research scientists. Initially, ADAMHA sponsored programs at historically African American colleges. As part of that effort, the Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Administration (ADAMHA) created the Minority Access to Research Careers (MARC) Program in 1980 in order to identify and prepare qualified undergraduates of recognized minorities to continue their education towards achieving Ph.D.s in the social and natural sciences
Applicant institutions must be four-year public or private, non-profit colleges, universities, or health professional schools with at least 55 percent of their enrollment population belonging to racial/ethnic minority groups from one or more of the ethnically defined groups noted above; and be able to develop the faculty and institutional facilities in order to provide a suitable research environment and high-quality research training in areas relevant to mental health. Foreign organizations are not eligible to apply.
Although Hunter College is not considered to be a minority school per se, fifty-eight percent of its 15,000 undergraduates belong to minority groups. Hunter has the fifth largest enrollment of African Americans undergraduates in the country. Although similar numbers are not available for other minority groups, Asians and Hispanics also make up significant proportions of Hunter's student body. Furthermore, seventy-three percent of the undergraduates are women.
Hunter College was founded in 1870 as the Normal School for Women. Becoming a liberal arts college after the turn of the century, it soon gained national recognition for the quality of its education and the graduates it produced. The college continues to enjoy an excellent reputation, taking pride in the fact that more women holding doctorate degrees in the country today received their bachelor's from Hunter College than from any other American College or University. Hunter College is the only institution of higher learning in the world to count among its graduates two female winners of the Nobel Prize.
Together with other campuses of the City University of New York (CUNY), Hunter College has long been committed to making a college education available to all qualified students, no matter what their socio-economic status or ethnicity. Despite threatening social and economic pressures, Hunter College still offers a first-rate education for the people of New York. Until 1973, the City University of New York charged no tuition at all. Obliged thereafter to impose a fee, it remains one of the least expensive institutions of higher learning in the country.
According to the 1986 CUNY Data Book, sixty percent of Hunter's students come from families earning less than $24,000. Most of the students live with their families and a large percentage of them must help support their parents and/or children. Recent studies report that seventy-five percent of Hunter's students work at least twenty hours per week.
Given Hunter's long history of graduating exceptional students from economically disadvantaged and ethnically diverse homes, the College believed it had the human resources necessary to participate successfully in the NIMH-COR Program. Today, Hunter College is one of 13 campuses selected for funding by the NIMH-COR Program. Since it began in 1981, Hunter College has enrolled 90 students in the NIMH-COR Program. All NIMH-COR Program students major in one of the three participating departments: Anthropology, Psychology, or Sociology, or are members of the CUNY BA or Thomas Hunter Honors Program.
The principal objectives of NIMH-COR Program Honors Undergraduate Research Training Grants are to:
increase the number of well-prepared students from institutions will substantial minority enrollments who can compete successfully for entry into research career training programs leading to Ph.D. or M.D. research careers in mental health;
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