Undergraduate & Post-Baccalaureate Training & Education Opportunities


CRTEC’s training and education initiatives for undergraduate and post-baccalaureate students are designed to engage scientific curiosity in the next generation of scientists, provide opportunities for students to explore cancer-related research as a future career, and fuel the biomedical research pipeline by supporting students in gaining research experience and skills needed to enhance their ability to be accepted to graduate school.

CRTEC strives to fuel the cancer-research pipeline by providing targeted programming to introduce students to cancer research-related careers and give them the opportunity to develop experience and skills at conducting cancer research. Whether it be a summer research experience through CREU (Cancer Research Experience for Undergraduates or a year-round research experience through U-TRAC (Undergraduate Training and Research Achievement in Cancer), undergraduate students in Colorado and across the nation can experience research as they prepare to enter into the cancer research pipeline.

Another CRTEC approach to strengthening the pipeline is to support students who are under-represented in the biomedical sciences field on their journey to becoming accepted into graduate school to conduct scientific research through our R25-funded PIKE-PREP (Preparation in Interdisciplinary Knowledge to Excel) program.

CREU: Cancer Research Experience for Undergraduates

Every summer 30 college undergraduate students are invited to spend ten weeks conducting mentored research in a cancer research laboratory at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

The goal of the University of Colorado Cancer Center's Cancer Research Experience for Undergraduates (CREU) is to engage scientific curiosity in the next generation of scientists and provide an opportunity for college undergraduates to consider a future career in cancer-related research.

Directors: Mary Reyland, PhD, and John Tentler, PhD