About Us

Associate Cancer Center Faculty From Minority-Serving Institutions

For over a decade, the UCCCC has partnered with minority-serving institution Chicago State University (CSU) to increase underrepresented minorities in the healthcare workforce as a mechanism to reduce disparities and advance research pertinent to the community.

In 2022, the UCCCC deepened this commitment and partnership by developing Associate Memberships for CSU faculty to provide research opportunities for them and help better diversify UCCCC’s researcher pool.

In 2024, OCECHE expanded the UCCCC faculty membership pilot that was initially only established in Cook County, with neighboring universities located in Will, Lake Illinois, and Lake Indiana counties. The pilot is now in four of our five-county catchment areas and the fifth county is scheduled to be included in 2025. The goal of the program is to share expertise, increase faculty diversity, leverage academic research resources that smaller universities may not have access to, and increase UCCCC’s footprint in the catchment area counties in which our office is not geographically located. Membership includes access of all our resources, funding opportunities, such as $10K OCECHE community-academic research partnership mini-grants.