Source: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, MERCED submitted to
UC MERCED FARMERS
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
TERMINATED
Funding Source
OTHER GRANTS
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1013657
Grant No.
2017-38422-27227
Project No.
CALW-2017-03691
Proposal No.
2017-03691
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Program Code
NJ
Project Start Date
Sep 1, 2017
Project End Date
Aug 31, 2022
Grant Year
2020
Project Director
ORTIZ, R. M.
Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, MERCED
PO BOX 2039
MERCED,CA 95343
Performing Department
MOLECULAR CELL BIOLOGY
Non Technical Summary
Purpose: The San Joaquin Valley of California is among the nation's most disadvantaged regions, with among the lowest graduation rates and level of education, and highest poverty rates. The SJV is also among the most ethnically and racially diverse regions of California (and likely the nation). The primary purpose of our proposal is to maintain and enhance the excellent momentum established in the original cycle of our USDA HSI program at UC Merced by expanding the number and type of research training opportunities to the diverse population of students supported by UC Merced and our partner HSIs, CSU Stanislaus and UC Santa Cruz.Audience: Our programs target primarily students from traditionally underrepresented groups in STEM and those from social-economically disadvantaged backgrounds. In addition from positively impacting our scholars, we will also benefit local schools and their students through outreach opportunities as well as the community in general.Number of Scholars Benefiting: While we propose to financially support 15 undergraduate and 10 graduate scholars, the broader impacts will benefit all UROC scholars and regional students (over 300/yr).Products: Our principal products are well-trained undergraduate and graduate level scholars that will be highly qualified for academic or professional positions in agriculture-related disciplines. Other products include a large number of peer-reviewed publications, conference and meeting abstracts and proceedings, and new learning materials for our outreach efforts.Outcomes/Impacts: We expect 100% of our MS scholars to graduate and contribute to the diversity disparity in the STEM workforce especially within USDA. Based on the first iteration of our grant we expect the following to constitute most of our expected outcomes: (1) increased graduation rate of both undergraduate and graduate scholars compared to the non-scholars at each institution, (2) increased publications by both groups, (3) increased conference and meeting presentations, (4) increased number of awards and honors by both groups, (5) increased number of scholars pursuing agriculture-related careers, and (6) an opportunity to meet and discuss career opportunities with USDA representatives at meetings.
Animal Health Component
0%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
80%
Applied
20%
Developmental
(N/A)
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
70373101010100%
Knowledge Area
703 - Nutrition Education and Behavior;

Subject Of Investigation
7310 - Experimental design and statistical methods;

Field Of Science
1010 - Nutrition and metabolism;
Goals / Objectives
We will adhere to the primary goals of the USDA for this program, which are: (1) to attract and support undergraduate (UG) and graduate (GS) students from underrepresented groups in order to prepare them for careers related to the food, agricultural, and natural resources and human sciences of the United States,(2) to enhance the quality of post-secondary instruction within these disciplines, (3) to provide opportunities and access to food, agricultural, and natural resources and human sciences careers in the public and private sector, and (4) to align the efforts of HSIs and other non-profit organizations in support of the academic development and career attainment of URM groups.Our proposed program aims to develop the next generation of highly trained, GS in ag-related sciences. This will be accomplished by: (1) recruiting students from HSIs (CSUS, UCM, and UCSC) to participate in long-term, intensive research projects with participating faculty and USDA researchers, (2) providing scholars the opportunity to attend and present research at national conferences such SACNAS, which provide opportunities to UG researchers in STEM, and (3) incorporating practical ag-related themes into the curriculum of UCM STEM courses. This program will target the highly diverse UG population of the SJV, with the goal of increasing the representation of students from three HSIs (CSUS, UCM, and UCSC) and most notably students from URM groups into graduate programs related to the USDA need areas.
Project Methods
We will accomplish our goals and objectives by offering our USDA scholars many opportunities to enhance their training in ag-related sciences that includes: (1) extensive professional skills training including training in the responsible conduct of research, (2) experiential research learning, (3) opportunities to network and gain confidence by presenting at local and national meetings and conferences, (4) gaining exposure to USDA opportunities through an Ag Sciences Seminar series, and (5) participating in various outreach opportunities coordinated through our UC Cooperative Extension specialist in nutrition at UC Merced. Summer research opportunities will be available at multiple research sites including our USDA partner-site, the Western Human Nutrition Research Center at UC Davis, the Department of Nutrition at UC Davis, the Joint Genome Institute, and the partnering factulty at UC Merced in ag-related disciplines.The program inputs, outputs, and outcomes can be readily assessed and evaluated. We have secured the services of an external, professional evaluator, Dr. Patricia Campbell. Dr. Campbell will lead our efforts to provide project oversight and guidance in evaluation of the effectiveness of our program. The advisory board and Dr. Campbell will meet twice in person at UCM to discuss the program and provide their assessments to promote the programs goals and objectives. The initial meeting will be at the outset of the grant and prior to initiating any program elements to make sure we capture the guidance of the group. The next meeting will be in at the end of year 3, when we will have 3 years of data available for evaluation and assessment, and just prior to developing the next cycle of the grant. We will also coordinate two teleconferences in the even years to provide updates and get additional feedback. The scholar's attitudes, motivation, appreciation, and knowledge will be assessed by comparing their scores on pre- and post-program surveys to be developed with Dr. Campbell. Given Dr. Campbell's documented expertise and experience in this area, specific evaluation metrics will be developed with her consultation. Working with Dr. Campbell we will provide meta-evaluation.

Progress 09/01/17 to 08/31/22

Outputs
Target Audience:Because of the demographics of UC Merced, a vast majority of our scholars are Hispanic and for this most recent class of scholars all are of Hispanic, primarily of Mexican decent, with the exception of one scholar who is Brazilian and first generation. The outreach work that the scholars are involved in also impacts a vast majority of Hispanic or Latino students in the local grade schools. Changes/Problems:We were able to add a part-time staff assistant to assist with both grants (2021). She started in September 2022. We continue to collaborate with the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) and the Banatao Institute at UC Merced in order to access greater programming in the areas of agriculture, the UC Merced Experimental Smart Farm, and to have support for students and the director. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?We have provided funding for our scholars to present their work at national (SACNAS) and local meetings. Our UG scholars are participating in the UC Merced sponsored summer scholars program which provides a wealth of professional development. Our UG scholars are also getting mentorship and guidance to prepare abstracts for the national SACNAS meeting. Our UG scholars also participate in the UC Merced Undergraduate Research Opportunity Center (UROC) summer skills training program. Our graduate students also have resources available to them via our graduate division office and CITRIS. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?-Most of the work is available on the website for our program (http://usdahsi.ucmerced.edu). We also advertise all USDA opportunities through our scholars email listserv. We have setup a Microsoft Teams Channel to communicate more effectively with current scholars. -We have also encouraged our scholars to use their social media accounts to actively promote their ag-related work. For example, a past scholar, Dr. Vicky Espinoza, created a YouTube channel to engage small agricultural operators and disadvantaged community members in the Central Valley around the new Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), the first law in California to effectively regulate groundwater with wide ranging impacts. Dr. Espinoza translated the educational videos into Spanish herself and compensated another translator for producing videos in Hmong, reaching the greatest populations in the Central Valley. All 25 videos can be found on Cali Water Ag: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCym_U7oaloj9dW9EM7s5NQw What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?This is the close-out report for 2017-03691; however, we will continue to implement our program activities with a particular emphasis on the K-12 outreach component in our new grant (2021--03397).

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Because we had two USDA HSI grants active simultaneously (the new grant; 2021--03397 + the initial grant in a no-cost extension; 2017-03691), the cohort was considered as a single cohort independent of which grant was funding them. This is especially important from an evaluation perspective in order to achieve a critical cohort mass to perform statistical evaluation of the evaluation data. -This reporting period included serving 11 undergraduate students and 3 graduate students from UC Merced. The composition of the cohort was 7 females and 7 males, and all identify as Hispanic, primarily Chicanx. Students come from Natural Sciences and Engineering. - From this cohort, 9 of the 11 UG graduated and most have now been accepted in graduate programs and 2 of the 3 GS are in post-doc positions and the 3rd GS (J. Alvarez-Sagero) successfully advanced to candidacy for her PhD. The other 2 UG scholars remain enrolled and expect to graduate in 2023 and 2024, respectively. Both remain actively involved in research. - For this entire grant period (5 yrs), we successfully supported 26 UG and 18 GS, which exceeded program expectations. We had 100% completion rate among the scholars - At the end of the reporting period, we recruited a new cohort of 6 scholars, beginning 06/01/2022, who will complete the full program of educational outreach, computational skills training, and summer agricultural intensive. Our new cohort consists of 3 GS and 3 UG, and all identify as Hispanic/Latinx, primarily Chicanx and 1 Latino. The preferred gender identities of the group is 3 women and 3 men. Students are enrolled full time in the schools of either Natural Sciences or Engineering. - We successfully recruited one scholar from our sister USDA NIFA program, FACTS, also administered by CITRIS and led by Dr. Colleen Naughton. The partnership supports greater connections with research for students and continuation and retention in research. - Scholars were exceedingly productive with at least 7 publications during this period from past scholars. Over the 5 yrs of funding for grant 2017, scholars published greater than 20 peer-reviewed publications. (exact # is not possible because some scholars have papers that are pending without final decision). - The scholars also generated 6 new learning modules for the K-12 outreach component that we continue to format and refine to put on our website this spring. - We also received robust evaluation data from our external evaluator since we now have a critical mass of students to generate the power needed for statistical analysis. - Because one of our initial goals was to extend the network of ag-related researchers regionally, it is important to report that the PD (Ortiz) led the successful submission of a USDA NextGen grant application (tier 3, $20M) that included CITRIS director, Dr. Josh Viers, and the USDA HSI FACTS PD, Dr. Colleen Naughton. Evaluation and program data generated from our HSI grants was a significant component of this consortium grant.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Aldaz KJ, S Ortiz, RM Ortiz, LK Diaz Rios, J Dhillon. 2022. A cross-sectional analysis of food perceptions, food preferences, diet quality, and health in a food desert campus. Nutrients 14, 5215. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14245215
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Cornejo MA, E Jardines, A Nishiyama, D Nakano, RM Ortiz. 2022. Simultaneous SGLT2 inhibition and caloric restriction improves insulin resistance and kidney function in OLETF rats. Molecular & Cellular Endocrinology 560, 111811. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mce.2022.111811
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Cornejo MA, RM Ortiz. 2021. Body Mass Cycling and Predictors of Body Mass Regain during Impaired Metabolism. Metabolism: Clinical & Experimental 125: 154912 doi.org/10.1016/j.metabol.2021.154912
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Emery JM, RM Ortiz. 2021. Mitofusin 2: A link between mitochondrial function and substrate metabolism? Mitochondrion 61:125-137 doi.org/10.1016/j.mito.2021.09.003
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Godoy-Lugo J, MA Thorwald, DA Mendez, R Rodriguez, D Nakano, A Nishiyama, RM Ortiz. 2022. Glucose Increases Hepatic Mitochondrial Antioxidant Enzyme Activities in Insulin Resistant Rats Following Chronic Angiotensin Receptor Blockade. International Journal of Molecular Sciences 23, 10897. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms231810897
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Rodriguez R, AY Lee, JA Godoy-Lugo, B Martinez, D Nakano, DG Parkes, A Nishiyama, JP Vazquez-Medina, RM Ortiz. 2021. Chronic AT1 blockade improves hyperglycemia by decreasing adipocyte macrophage infiltration and decreasing hepatic PCK1 and G6PC1 expression in obese rats. Accepted, American Journal of Physiology: Endocrinology & Metabolism 321: E714E727 doi:10.1152/ajpendo.00584.2020
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Rodriguez-Ortiz CJ, MA Thorwald, R Rodriguez, M Mejias-Ortega, Z Kieu, N Maitra, C Hawkins, J Valenzuela, M Peng, A Nishiyama, RM Ortiz*, M Kitazawa*. 2022. Angiotensin receptor blockade with olmesartan alleviates brain pathology in obese OLETF rats. Clinical & Experimental Pharmacology & Physiology 1-10. DOI: 10.1111/1440-1681.13738


Progress 09/01/20 to 08/31/21

Outputs
Target Audience:Because of the demographics of UC Merced, a vast majority of our scholars are Hispanic and for this most recent class of scholars all are of Hispanic, primarily of Mexican decent, with the exception of one scholar who is Filipino and first generation. The outreach work that the scholars are involved in also impacts a vast majority of Hispanic or Latino students in the local grade schools. The grade school teachers in the schools also participate in our outreach. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?- some of our scholars participated in online/virtual meetings where they had networking and professional development opportunities such as SACNAS How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?-Most of the work is available on the website for our program (http://usdahsi.ucmerced.edu). We also advertise all USDA opportunities through our scholars email listserv. We have setup a Microsoft Teams Channel to communicate more effectively with current scholars. -Vicky Espinoza created a YouTube channel to engage small agricultural operators and disadvantaged community members in the Central Valley around the new Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), the first law in California to effectively regulate groundwater with wide ranging impacts. Espinoza translated the educational videos into Spanish herself and compensated another translator for producing videos in Hmong, reaching the greatest populations in the Central Valley. All 25 videos can be found on Cali Water Ag: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCym_U7oaloj9dW9EM7s5NQw What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?To date we are on track for accomplishing our goals. 100% of our scholars are graduating and the graduate students are advancing on-time within their graduate programs. We are also working closely with the inaugural grade school teachers to expand our initial attempt at the STEAM educational outreach program with the grade schools. We are now evaluating the results for this program. We will continue to support the professional development of our scholars. We are offering more educational programs to connect students effectively with agricultural, technology and food research and other programs, and showing more career pathways in agriculture and USDA. We also will have a student at UCDC working with USDA. Also CITRIS has staff trained to work with USDA through the Kika de la Garza fellowship.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? -This reporting period included serving 6 undergraduate students and 3 graduate students from UC Merced. The composition of the cohort is 6 women and 3 men, and all identify as Hispanic, Chicana and/or Latinx. Students come from Natural Sciences and Engineering. -Through the three additional graduate students of this cohort, we supported additional graduate students, meeting our targets of 15 total in the 4 year period. -At the end of the reporting period, we recruited a full new group of 12 scholars, beginning 8/15/2021, who will complete the full program of educational outreach, computational skills training, and summer agricultural intensive. 2 are graduate, 10 are undergraduate, all identify as Hispanic/Latinx, and the preferred gender identities of the group is half women and half men. Students come from all three schools on our campus, spanning Social Science Humanities and Arts, Natural Sciences and Engineering. -Four of the current students participated in our sister USDA NIFA program, FACTS, also administered by CITRIS and led by Dr. Colleen Naughton. The partnership supports greater connections with research for students and continuation and retention in research. -For the reporting period, participating students were limited due to COVID-19 and the reduction of undergraduate research internships in most labs. FARMERS supported six graduate students with graduate research assistantships. -Scholars were exceedingly productive with publications during this period, delivering on the skills built through this internship, and publishing 14 peer-reviewed journal articles in addition to other products. - One of our undergraduate scholars, Jenny Mendoza, won an award for her abstract presentation at the 2021 SACNAS meeting (held virtually)

Publications


    Progress 09/01/19 to 08/31/20

    Outputs
    Target Audience:Because of the demographics of UC Merced, a vast majority of our scholars are Hispanic and for this most recent class of scholars all are of Hispanic, primarily of Mexican decent, with the exception of one scholar who is Filipino and first generation. The out-reach work that the scholars are involved in also impacts a vast majority of Hispanic or Latino students in the local grade schools. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?We have provided funding for our scholars to present their work at national (SACNAS) and local meetings in addition to sending 1of our GS scholars to the AAHHE national meeting in Costa Mesa, CA. Our UG scholars areparticipating in the UC Merced-sponsored summer scholars program which provides a wealth of professional development.Our UG scholars are also getting mentorship and guidance to prepare abstracts for the national SACNAS meeting. Our UGscholars also participate in the UC Merced Undergraduate Research Opportunity Center (UROC) summer skills trainingprogram. 2 of our scholars participated in extramural research at George Washington University and UC Santa Cruz. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Most of the work is disseminate on our website (http://usdahsi.ucmerced.edu/) including the educational materials we developed for the 4th and 5th grade classes. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?To date we are on track for accomplishing our goals. 100% of our scholars are graduating and the graduate students are advancing on-time within their graduate programs. We are also working closely with the inaugural grade school teachers to expand our initial attempt at the STEAM educational outreach program with the grade schools. We are now evaluating the results for this program. We will continue to support the professional development of our scholars.

    Impacts
    What was accomplished under these goals? - From 9/01/19to present we are supporting5undergraduate students, 3 PhD-level and 1 MS student. One of the UGs has now transitioned into a MS program as of 1/1/20. One of the PhD students advanced tocandidacy. - Werecruited 3 graduate student scholars for the next cycle of the program,which puts us at 11 (one more than the required 10) - We have identified a pool of undergraduate scholars for the next cycle but bc of the COVID-19 pandemic we are waiting to enroll 3 or 4 of them (we have currently trained 13 so this next cohort will put us over the minimum of 15 for the grant) - All scholars established their independent research projects and contributed to the outreach projects on nutrition education and STEAM in the schools -Our students attended multiple meetings to present and learn including SACNAS and AAHHE - We established an outreach program with the local schools to perform science projects and the projects were led by the UC Merced USDA scholars. This cycle our program has expanded to 3 unique projects in 8 classrooms at the 4th and 5th grade levels. - One of our scholars is applying to the USDA summer program at Beltsville (accepted but had to postpone due to COVID-19). We plan to support her internship at Beltsville during the AY instead - one of our GS scholars published his first dissertation chapters

    Publications

    • Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2020 Citation: 1. Cornejo MA, J Nguyen, J Cazares, B Escobedo, A Nishiyama, D Nakano, RM Ortiz. 2020. Partial Body Mass Recovery after Caloric Restriction Abolishes Improved Glucose Tolerance in Obese, Insulin Resistant Rats. In Press, Frontiers Endocrinology


    Progress 09/01/18 to 08/31/19

    Outputs
    Target Audience:Because of the demographics of UC Merced, a vast majority of our scholars are Hispanic and for this most recent class of scholars all are of Hispanic, primarily of Mexican decent. The out-reach work that the scholars are involved in also impact a vast majority of Hispanic or Latino students. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?We have provided funding for our scholars to present their work at national and local meetings in addition to sending 3of our GS scholars (2 affiliate and 1 new GS) to the AAHHE national meeting in Costa Mesa, CA. Our UG scholars are participating in the UC Merced-sponsored summerscholars program which provides a wealth of professional development. Our UG scholars are also getting mentorship andguidance to prepare abstracts for the national SACNAS meeting. Our UG scholars also participate in the UC Merced Undergraduate Research Opportunity Center (UROC) summer skills training program. One of our UG scholars will also work at the UC Davis genome center in summer 2019. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Most of the work is disseminate on our website (http://usdahsi.ucmerced.edu/) including the educational materials we developed for the 4th and 5th grade classes. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?To date we are on track for accomplishing our goals. 100% of our scholars are graduating and the graduate students are advancing on-time within their graduate programs. We are also working closely with the inaugural grade school teachers to expand our initial attempt at the STEAM educational outreach program with the grade schools. We are now evaluating the results for this program. We will continue to support the professional development of our scholars.

    Impacts
    What was accomplished under these goals? - From 9/01/18 to present we supported 7 students, 3 PhD-level and 4 UGs. One of the PhD students completed their degree in December 2018 and 3 of the UGs graduated in May 2019. One of the other graduate students advanced to candidacy. We also incorporated 3 additional PhD-level graduate students as affiliate students that participate in our training and outreach but are not directly funded by USDA funds. - We have identified our next cohort of USDA scholars for 2019-2020; they include 4 graduate students and 5 UGs, our biggest cohort to date! - All scholars established their independent research projects and contributed to the outreach projects on nutrition education and STEAM in the schools - We established our program website (http://usdahsi.ucmerced.edu/) but it continues to evolve - Our students attended multiple meetings to present and learn including SACNAS and AAHHE - We established an outreach program with the local schools to perform science projects and the projects were led by the UC Merced USDA scholars. We established a curriculum and experiments around composting and effects of soil-quality on plant growth using rhizotrons. The students ultimately presented their findings in a research expo held on the UC Merced campus. We submitted a survey to the teachers and students to evaluate their participation in this project. The survey deadline is after the due date of this form, but we will work w/ our external evaluator to assess the surveys. - We are working to support the UC Merced Summer Ag Institute that was implemented in summer 2018. This was originally supported by the UC Merced Blum Center on Food Security; however, the funding ended last year so we plan to continue to support it for the life our our grant. This includes an intensive 2-wk course during the summer for our scholars and 10 other students from UC Merced to learn about ag-related industries and careers in the valley. - We established an MOU w/ The Wonderful Company (pistacho, POM, etc) and The Almond Board of California so they can support summer internships for our scholars. As of this writing, we have one potential candidate to perform a summer internship at ABC. - One of our summer 2019 scholars will be in-residence at the USDA Western Human Nutrition Research Center at UC Davis to perform research in metabolomics -We are working with our campus' Health Sciences Research Institute to inherit the Summer Ag Institute that was initiated in summer 2018. We plan to continue the support of this program for our USDA and affiliated scholars and expand the opportunities hereinto.

    Publications

    • Type: Websites Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: http://usdahsi.ucmerced.edu/


    Progress 09/01/17 to 08/31/18

    Outputs
    Target Audience:Because of the demographics of UC Merced, a vast majority of our scholars are Hispanic and for this most recent class of scholars all are of Hispanic, primarily of Mexican decent. The out-reach work that the scholars are involved in also impact a vast majority of Hispanic or Latino students. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?We have provided funding for our scholars to present their work at national and local meetings in addition to sending one of our GS scholars to HSI workshop at UC Riverside. Our UG scholars are participating in the UC Merced-sponsored summer scholars program which provides a wealth of professional development. Our UG scholars are also getting mentorship and guidance to prepare abstracts for the national SACNAS meeting. We have also established a foundation with our community partner, BEATS, to assist with our outreach goals. For example, we have a defined plan to collaborate with the BEATS CEO, Michael Urner, to have our scholars participate in the STEM-day activities set for June 22, 2018 on the UC Merced campus. This event is locally sponsored by the Merced County Office of Education. Most of these activites revolve around ag-related themes such as plant and soil sciences, and water (hydrology, sustainability, etc.) How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?To date, no significant results of any of our programs have been disseminated. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Given our infancy and accomplishments to date, we feel confident in ultimately accomplishing our current goals. Nonetheless, we will continue to strive to establish a more robust training program for our scholars that includes addtional opportunities for training and learning with our partner institutions such as the USDA Western Human Nutrition Research Center and UC Davis Department of Nutrition. We are also working more closely with our partner institutions such as UC Santa Cruz and CSU Stanislaus to refine our student exchange program so we can start supporting scholars from these partner HSI. The hiring of our new program assistant will greatly facilitate this aspect.

    Impacts
    What was accomplished under these goals? Goal 1: We have been very successful at attracting high-caliber Hispanic students at both the UG and GS levels so this goal is on track with our expectations. Goal 2:Because we have yet to complete our first 12 months of the study, it is too early to properly assess and evaluate this goal given that our initial cohort hasn't even completed their first cycle. Nonetheless, early indications of success are evident. One of our GS is on track to graduate in summer 2018, and the other GS is on track to complete her qualifying exam and move onto candidacy after starting the program as a MS student. Our UG scholars are all involved in resaerch and actively participating in all our program workshops. Goal 3: As with Goal 2, it is still too early to properly evaluate this goal, but our scholars are taking advantage of opportunities provided. For example, one of our UG scholars was accepted into an advanced computational skills training program at Vanderbilt University for the summer of 2018, and our graduating PhD student has already been accepted into a federally-funded postdoctoral program. Our other GS scholar was accepted into the USDA HSI symposium at UC Riverside in spring 2018. Goal 4:We have a collaboration with the Almond Board of California and The Wonderful Company/Paramount Farms to establish a mechanism for supporting our scholars to participate in internships at these industries to provide additional trying in ag-economics, food industry, and plant science among others.

    Publications

    • Type: Theses/Dissertations Status: Submitted Year Published: 2018 Citation: This dissertation is in progress and expected to be completed in summer 2018. Rodriguez Ruben. "Role of GLP-1 and AT1 signaling in obese, diabetic rats" UC Merced.