Welcome from the RISE UPP Principal Investigator Philip Rous

Colleagues,

I am delighted to introduce you to the National Science Foundations’s Eddie Bernice Johnson INCLUDES Initiative: Re-Imagining STEM Equity Utilizing Postdoctoral Pathways (RISE UPP) Alliance. This Alliance represents collaboration and innovation in education across a partnership that includes 25 universities and their 5 state university system offices. Our alliance recognizes that State university systems can be a catalyst for change and transformation while offering efficiencies and economies of scale.

The RISE UPP Alliance leverages the successes of two state university systems that have developed and implemented inter-institutional approaches to diversify faculty through postdoctoral recruitment, training, and “conversion” into tenure-track faculty positions; the University System of Maryland’s (USM) NSF AGEP PROMISE Academy and the University of California (UC) President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (PPFP). RISE UPP brings these two university systems together as Core Model Partners to support three additional state university systems that will replicate and adapt their models as Scaling Partners: the University of Texas System, the Texas A&M University System, and the University of North Carolina System.

I encourage you to stay informed about the work of the RISE UPP Alliance through our webinar series, newsletter and events. We look forward to sharing information with you about the important work that our Alliance is doing!

- Philip Rous, Provost, UMBC, and Principal Investigator, RISE UPP Alliance