Leadership Alliance Receives Presidential Award for Mentoring

Leadership Alliance Receives Presidential Award for Mentoring

On January 6, 2010, The Leadership Alliance was honored by a Presidential Award for Excellence in Science Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring Organizational Award for its longstanding success in mentoring students across critical transitions along the academic pipeline. The award recognizes specifically the successful Partnership for Minority Science Education (PMSE), which links resources of the Alliance’s research institutions with talented underrepresented undergraduate students nation-wide. PMSE mentoring activities include the Summer Research Early Identification Program (SREIP) and the Leadership Alliance National Symposium (LANS). These programs are partially funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health.

More than 60% of PMSE students go on to graduate training, with nearly 45% of them going into research and/or clinical doctoral training. The Leadership Alliance has produced more than 250 MDs and 150 PhDs, and given rise to more than 50 new faculty members at universities across the country. Brown University established the Leadership Alliance in 1992. Currently, the eight Ivy League universities, with other nationally competitive universities and minority-serving colleges and universities constitute the 33 members of the Leadership Alliance. The University of Pennsylvania has been a member of the Leadership Alliance since 1992.

The Presidential Award for Excellence in Science Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring identifies outstanding mentoring efforts that enhance the participation of groups (i.e., women, minorities, and persons with disabilities) that are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Individuals and organizations that are selected have demonstrated outstanding and sustained mentoring and effective guidance to a significant number of underrepresented students at the K-12, undergraduate or graduate education levels for at least five years. The awardees are leaders in the national effort to develop fully the Nation's human resources in STEM fields. In addition to being honored at the White House, the Leadership Alliance received $10,000 to advance our mentoring efforts.

The award was presented to the Executive Director of the Leadership Alliance, Dr. Valerie Wilson, by Dr John Holderen, the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and Dr. Arden Bement, the Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF). Representing the member institutions of the Leadership Alliance at the awards ceremony was Dr. Joel Oppenheim, founding coordinator of Leadership Alliance summer programs at New York University.

For information concerning the Leadership Alliance program at the University of Pennsylvania, contact Karen Lawrence, the coordinator of the Leadership Alliance program on our campus, at . For information on Penn’s SREIP program in Biomedical Graduate Studies, visit http://www.med.upenn.edu/bgs/applicants_suip.shtml.