Philosophy

Increasing the participation of underrepresented minority students in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields is of national concern. Establishing partnerships through the development of personal and professional relationships between faculty at research intensive and minority-serving institutions is one of the best means to achieve this objective.

Duke University, through its "Collaborations and Connections" intiative, is providing support for the Duke-NCCU STEM Partnership Program. This program takes advantage of both proximity and shared scientific interests to provide a structure for forming meaningful and productive relationships between the STEM faculties of Duke and North Carolina Central Universities. This will be accomplished by identifying teams of research-active Duke and NCCU faculty members that have proposed a specific collaborative research project that substantially involves a NCCU Master of Science student. It is important to use this mechanism to both strengthen existing relationships and to spawn new faculty-faculty relationships between institutions.