Graduate Program » Recruitment of Underrepresented Minorities

The Duke Integrated Toxicology and Environmental Health Program (ITEHP) is strongly committed to improving racial and ethnic diversity in the biological sciences. We actively participate in several programs to attract underrepresented minorities to Duke graduate programs, summarized below. The Duke University Office of Graduate Student Affairs (GSA) coordinates, supplements, and expands the recruiting efforts of all Duke graduate departments and programs. GSA Staff members visit numerous locations around the country to actively seek out talented minority students. We hope that our continued efforts will encourage more minority students to consider careers in toxicology and associated areas of environmental health, both as researchers and practitioners.

The following programs represent a few of the avenues open to underrepresented minority students:

Several ITEHP faculty members are mentors in the Duke Summer Research Opportunity Program (SROP). Funded by the Mellon Foundation, this program provides opportunities for undergraduates interested in graduate-level biomedical research. Students receive orientation and advice about graduate school. The Program emphasizes direct laboratory experience. Students spend a large majority of their time working in the laboratory, attending lab meetings, interacting with members of other labs, and otherwise conducting themselves just as though they had entered graduate school. Each student works under the supervision of a faculty mentor and will solve real research problems in an active, modern biomedical research laboratory.

The Duke Post-Baccalaureate Research Education Program (PREP), funded by the NIH, brings underrepresented minority scholars who have recently completed their bachelors degree to the Duke campus, for one or two years of intensive research and educational development. In recent years, several ITEHP faculty members have served as mentors to students participating in this program.

The Duke University Graduate School hosts a Pre-Application Graduate Visitation Day, in which underrepresented minority undergraduates from across the country are brought to Duke University in the fall for a focused weekend of activities and interviews relating to graduate school.

The Duke University Graduate School awards approximately 35 honorary Duke Endowment Fellowships to the strongest underrepresented minority students in the applicant pool. For students in the ITEHP program, the fellowships are supplemental in nature, providing an additional $4000 per year in stipend.