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At North Carolina A&T State University (NCATSU), there was a critical need to better coordinate genuine research and classroom experiences for undergraduates early in their academic career. We describe the development and implementation of a faculty alliance across academic departments to increase biomathematics research opportunities for underrepresented minorities. Our faculty alliance is called the Integrative Biomathematical Learning and Empowerment Network for Diversity (iBLEND). The fundamental purpose of the iBLEND alliance was to inspire underrepresented minorities to pursue research careers by increasing the visibility of research conducted at the interface of mathematics and biology at NCATSU. Because of the many positive impacts, iBLEND gained significant buy-in from administration, faculty, and students by 1) working from the ground up with administration to promote campus-wide biomathematics research and training, 2) fostering associations between research and regular undergraduate academic courses, 3) creating and disseminating biomathematics teaching and learning modules, and 4) enhancing learning community support at the interface of mathematics and biology. Currently, iBLEND is viewed as a productive site for graduate schools to recruit underrepresented minority students having specific competencies related to mathematical biology.

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We assess the four point method of relative dispersion proposed by Jones and Winkler to identify the hyperbolic trajectories of a system. We sample a discrete analog to a quasi-geostrophic, single layered flow field and perform a comparison of the dispersion of neighboring points after iteration. We evaluate our method by performing a transformation to ( ) , x y space and comparing the trajectories corresponding to maximum dispersion with the ( ) , x y values of trajectories of the Standard map, derived from traditional techniques. We perform a similar evaluation using a 2D Ross by wave. We show that the method of relative dispersion is able to generate 2 nd order accurate (on the scale of the discretization) hyperbolic trajectories.