“For us, (and) I can speak from the Puerto Rican view because we don’t have this type of research opportunity in Puerto Rico, this is one of the best schools for our research interests,” Colon said.

MSU will be receiving a $1.5 million federal grant to bolster a 12-year-old program in conjunction with the University of Puerto Rico-Cayey that is aimed at educating more Hispanic students in the neurosciences, said William Atchison, an MSU professor of pharmacology and toxicology who wrote the proposal for the grant.

Awarded to the university from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the grant will cover travel, tuition and room and board costs for students from the University of Puerto Rico for undergraduate studies at MSU. The students will be paired with mentors while studying at MSU and eventually will be working toward doctorates, which also will be funded by the grant.

“There’s really a disparity in the number of underrepresented minority scientists in terms of the percentage within the population (compared) to the number of scientists,” said Atchison. “My hope is that we end up having more Hispanic students in neuroscience at MSU and that the ones that we do get, progress very well in their career.”

Francheska Vega, who studies biology at the University of Puerto Rico, has spent the past three summers conducting research as part of the Ronald McNair Summer Research Opportunity Program at MSU. She attended MSU last fall as an undergraduate student.

“It’s a great opportunity, especially for us that are from a little island,” she said. “We don’t have that many opportunities for research, and interacting with other people from other cultures is important too.”

Vega said she hopes to eventually get her doctorate in neurosciences and to eventually pursue a career in research. She will not be returning to MSU this fall but said she will keep in touch with her mentor at the university “to see what I’m going to be doing next.”

Another student from the University of Puerto Rico, Maryvi Gonzales, took part in the research program this summer, her first time doing so. She said, overall, the program is important because it fosters minority participation in scientific research.

“It’s important because here … minorities can be expressive,” Gonzales said. “We can do things for humans to help in the sciences. We can actually express it by doing work and doing research.”