- Posted in All University
- Category: Spotlight NewsCampus News
LINCOLN UNIVERSITY, PA – Lincoln University may soon be among few, if any, of the nation’s Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs) with an undergraduate degree program in Neuroscience thanks to a three-year National Science Foundation (NSF) grant beginning this year.
The NSF Targeted Infusion Project: Bridges Alliances to Infuse Neuroscience at Lincoln University (BrainLU) hopes to diversify the pipeline of neuroscientists for the 21st century through the development of a bachelor’s degree program in Neuroscience along with a cooperative 4+1 bachelor and master’s degree program with Drexel University.
“Lincoln can be a leader of HBCUs in training students in neuroscience at the undergraduate level so that they are equipped for the rigors of neuroscience at the graduate level,” said Dr. Karen Baskerville, the grant’s principal investigator. “Furthermore, the 4+1 BS/MS program will directly increase the number of underrepresented students matriculating into graduate programs.”
The $414,892 grant supports degree program development, student stipends, faculty salaries, research, teaching materials, summer student housing and meals, meeting travel, iPad minis for classes and teaching labs, GRE materials/courses and small equipment.
Baskerville explained that students in the BS/MS program, while they would need to apply and be accepted to the PhD program at Drexel University College of Medicine, they would more easily transition into it since they would have already taken the same courses as those students.
Currently, Morehouse College offers a minor in neuroscience while a few HBCUs offer doctoral programs, including Delaware State University, she added.
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Founded in 1854, Lincoln University (PA) is the FIRST of four Lincoln Universities in the world and is the nation’s FIRST degree-granting Historically Black College and University (HBCU). The University combines the elements of a liberal arts and science-based undergraduate curriculum along with select graduate programs to meet the needs of those living in a highly technological and global society. Today, Lincoln, which enrolls a diverse student body of approximately 2,000 men and women, possesses an international reputation for preparing and producing world-class leaders such as Thurgood Marshall, the FIRST African American U.S. Supreme Court Justice; Lillian Fishburne, the FIRST African American woman promoted to Rear Admiral in the U.S. Navy; Langston Hughes, the noted poet; Kwame Nkrumah, the FIRST president of Ghana; Nnamdi Azikiwe, the FIRST president of Nigeria and a myriad of others.