The Meyerhoff Scholarship Program, which celebrated its 20th year in 2008, is considered a successful intervention program for increasing the number of underrepresented minorities who earn PhDs or MD/PhDs and pursue research careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This article examines the relationship between participation in one specific component of the Meyerhoff Scholarship Program—on-campus, academic year research—and the pursuit of a STEM PhD by thirteen cohorts of program participants. The results indicate that participation in on-campus, academic year research is associated with a substantial increase in the probability of pursuing a STEM PhD. They further suggest that the structure and intensity of the on-campus, academic year research experience matter.

PROMISE: Maryland's Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP), sponsored by the National Science Foundation, is a consortium that is designed to increase the numbers of underrepresented minority (URM) PhDs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields who will pursue academic careers. A strength of PROMISE is its alliance infrastructure that connects URM graduate students on different campuses through centralized programming for the three research universities in Maryland: the University of Maryland Baltimore County (the lead institution in the alliance), the University of Maryland College Park, and the University of Maryland Baltimore (UMB). PROMISE initiatives cover graduate student recruitment, retention, community building, PhD completion, and transition to careers.Although it is not a fellowship, PROMISE offers professional development and skill-building programs that provide academic and personal support for URM students on all three campuses. PROMISE on UMB's campus includes the School of Medicine, which sponsors tricampus programs that promote health and wellness to accompany traditional professional development programs. PROMISE uniquely and atypically includes a medical school within its alliance. The PROMISE programs serve as interventions that reduce isolation and facilitate degree completion among diverse students on each campus. This article describes details of the PROMISE AGEP and presents suggestions for replicating professional development programs for URMs in biomedical, MD/master's, and MD/PhD programs on other campuses.