The University of Texas System Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (UT LSAMP) proposes to host a Bridge to the Doctorate (BD) program at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), the lead institution of the 25 year-old Alliance. Twelve Fellows from underrepresented minority (URM) groups will be fully-funded during their entire Ph.D. program. The proposed project builds on experiences gathered by the UT System LSAMP regarding the development of successful and replicable strategies to ensure that large numbers of URM students graduate with undergraduate degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). The BD project is an extension of these efforts and will support a select group of LSAMP alumni so that they may earn a terminal degree in their discipline. The project will both refine existing activities and develop new initiatives to enable these students to achieve their goal of completing a Ph.D. program. Moreover, the project will promote the maturation of the students' professional skills, values and attitudes along the way. The project will thus permit replication of these activities at emerging research universities with student profiles similar to that of UTEP, the host institution, which is a dynamic, majority minority, urban university located in the largest metropolitan area along the U.S.-Mexico border with a combined population of more than 2 million people.