SUMMARY, Career Enhancement Program The goal of the Career Enhancement Program (CEP) is to promote and support promising candidates at the University of Colorado Cancer Center (UCCC) who are interested in pursuing a career as translational researchers in head and neck cancer (HNC). The program will encourage applicants from a variety of disciplines to undertake studies under the guidance and support of the Colorado HNC SPORE. The program will evaluate the most promising investigators based on their training and specific projects proposed. Our SPORE will support awardees for their research career developmental activities through SPORE funding and institutional matching funds designated to the CEP. Once awardees are selected, investigators from the Colorado HNC SPORE and other investigators in the UCCC will act as mentors to advise and evaluate them as they initiate and pursue their research projects. Productivity will be evaluated not only by numbers of publications and grants, but also by the establishment of new collaborations and networking within the institution, and with other SPORE investigators across the country. Powerful mentoring tools including workshops in training mentors and interactions of mentor-mentee pairs will assure awardees’ success. Outstanding CEP projects may be promoted to full projects within the Colorado HNC SPORE to replace those that are not meeting their translational research objectives or that have been completed. Successful CEP awardees may be provided with continued support as project co-leaders of the promoted projects. Funding for this CEP will help these individuals succeed as they pursue academic research careers and will provide new ideas and approaches to the overall Colorado HNC SPORE.