NuSTEAM - Nuclear Science in Texas to Enhance and Advance Minorities

The NuSTEAM program is a collaborative effort by four Texas-based universities that offer an undergraduate traineeship project under the guidelines of the Department of Energy TBD-NP (Research Traineeships to Broaden and Diversify the Nuclear Physics community) initiative. The collaboration consists of the University of Houston (UH), University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley, University of Texas – El Paso and Prairie View A&M University.

In its first year, the program supported eight undergraduate students selected from those universities. Nine students are being supported in the second year. The student's training begins with a six-week summer course at UH, followed by two weeks of hands-on experience in the laboratory environment at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Upon returning to their home institutions, the program allows the students to work on selected research topics during the Fall and Spring semesters.

In this talk, I will discuss the curriculum of the program and the experiences we had. I will present the metrics applied to determine student success, and I will discuss the future of this and other related federally-funded programs.