This essay compares the approaches that scientific societies in the ACCESS meta-organization use to implement and assess travel award programs for URM trainees and presents a set of recommendations, including both short- and long-term outcomes assessment in populations of interest and specialized programmatic activities coupled to travel award programs.

In this article, we report on an 11-year study that explores approaches to improve student success in college by a five-week summer program in Mathematics and Lan­guage Arts for entering freshmen. To recruit students into the program, we invited stu­dents accepted at the university and listed as underrepresented and economically disadvantaged (Pell-eligible) by the Office of Institutional Research at California State University, Northridge. The program con­sisted of all-day Math and English enhance­ment in mixed ability groups. Results of this program examining Math and English performance at California State University, Northridge showed that students com­pleting the summer programs during the 11-year study period had improved pass rates in Math and English at California State University, Northridge compared with students in a control group who did not participate in the summer program. The results show that intensive pre-college enhancement for entering freshmen can improve student success in college. Student graduation data from the early cohorts (2010, 2011, 2012) were obtained from Institutional Research. The summary results showed that students from the accepted/ attending group had substantially increased GPAs and graduation rates, essentially clos­ing the achievement gap. Increased interest in biomedical research careers was also de­veloped by the program, as demonstrated by a five-fold number of summer enrich­ment participants entering the PhD, MARC (Minority Access to Research Careers) and RISE (Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement) programs than students who did not attend summer enrichment. Ethn Dis.2020;30(1):33-40; doi:10.18865/ed.30.1.33

ABSTRACTPromoting diversity and inclusiveness in the STEM academic workforce remains a key challenge and national priority. Scientific societies can play a significant role in this process through the creation and implementation of programs to foster STEM academic workforce diversification, and by providing mentoring and skills development training that empower scientists from under-represented minority (URM) backgrounds to succeed in their communities of practice. In this article, we provide examples of challenges met by scientific societies in these areas and present data from the American Society for Cell Biology, highlighting the benefits received by trainees through long-term engagement with its programs. The success of these initiatives illustrates the impact of discipline-specific programming by scientific societies in supporting the development of URM scientists and an increasingly diverse and inclusive academic STEM community.