By Deborah Wormser

UT Southwestern Medical Center will be a participant in the largest National Institutes of Health (NIH) research grant ever given to UT El Paso. The five-year, $22.6 million grant will fund a UTEP-based consortium of 19 institutions called BUILDing SCHOLARS (Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity: Southwest Consortium of Health-Oriented Education Leaders and Research Scholars).

Under the grant, UTEP will recruit high school seniors interested in biomedical science, the socio-behavioral sciences, and engineering with a goal of increasing diversity in those fields. Students accepted to the program will receive full-tuition scholarships plus a stipend, academic support starting with a pre-college boot camp to hone academic skills, followed by mentored research opportunities in college at UT Southwestern and other partner organizations, mostly universities, in the region.

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