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The mission of The Moore Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program ( MURAP ) is to contribute, in a significant way, to assuring that there is a large cohort of minority Ph.D.s in the humanities, fine arts and social sciences in the United States in the twenty-first century.
In 1989, MURAP began as an extension of the University of North Carolina 's Summer Pre-Graduate Research Experience program ( SPGRE ), whose mission was to increase the number of minorities pursuing graduate school and faculty positions by providing minority undergraduates with exposure to graduate level research in the natural sciences. MURAP was set up to target students in the humanities and social sciences. In its initial years, the program began humbly with three students working under three faculty mentors in these fields, always with a goal of augmenting the representation of minorities pursuing academic study and careers.
With initial funding from the U.S. Department of Education, MURAP received four years of direct support from the Jessie B. DuPont Foundation which allowed the number of participants to be further increased. Then, in 1995, MURAP received support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the program became an institutional partner with the Foundation's Mellon Minority Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF), later renamed the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship ( http://www.mmuf.org ). MMUF is committed to remedying the shortage of faculty of color and of others with a demonstrated commitment to diversity in higher education.
In 2003, like MMUF, MURAP reaffirmed and broadened its commitment to its mission. The program was renamed the Moore Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program in honor of Dr. Mignon Moore, a sociology professor now at UCLA, past director of Columbia's MMUF program, and MURAP's first Ph.D recipient. Dr. Moore's educational and professional pursuits are a model of academic excellence and dedication to academic diversity that MURAP strives to uphold for all of its student fellows.
MURAP's objective is to foster the entrance of talented students from diverse backgrounds into graduate school and faculty positions within the humanities, social sciences, and fine arts in U.S. colleges and universities. More broadly, the program seeks to change the demography of the academy by increasing the number of students—both minority as well as others with a proven commitment to diversity—who pursue doctoral degrees.
The program serves the related goals of structuring campus environments so that they will be more conducive to improved racial and ethnic relations and of providing role models for all youth.
With the generous continued support of the Mellon Foundation and additional funding and support from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, the Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development, and the Office of the Graduate School, MURAP aims to achieve its mission by identifying and training in its 10-week summer program students of great promise and helping them to become scholars of the highest distinction.
To apply to MURAP or find out about other upcoming MURAP events, please visit the MURAP website at http://www.unc.edu/depts/murap.
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