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Institutional Interventions That Remove Barriers to Recruit and Retain Diverse Biomedical PhD Students.

ABSTRACT: The faculty and student populations in academia are not representative of the diversity in the U.S. POPULATION:Thus, research institutions and funding agencies invest significant funds and effort into recruitment and retention programs that focus on increasing the flow of historically underrepresented minorities (URMs) into the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) pipeline. Here, we outline challenges, interventions, and assessments by the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (GSBS) that increased the diversity of the student body independently of grade point averages and Graduate Record Examination scores. Additionally, we show these efforts progressively decreased the attrition rates of URM students over time while eliminating attrition in the latest cohort. Further, the majority of URM students who graduate from the GSBS are likely to remain in the STEM pipeline beyond the postdoctoral training period. We also provide specific recommendations based on the data presented to identify and remove barriers that prevent entry, participation, and inclusion of the underrepresented and underserved in the STEM pipeline.

SUBMITTER: Wilson MA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5998306 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Institutional Interventions That Remove Barriers to Recruit and Retain Diverse Biomedical PhD Students.

Wilson Marenda A MA DePass Anthony A Bean Andrew J AJ

CBE life sciences education 20180601 2

The faculty and student populations in academia are not representative of the diversity in the U.S.<h4>Population</h4>Thus, research institutions and funding agencies invest significant funds and effort into recruitment and retention programs that focus on increasing the flow of historically underrepresented minorities (URMs) into the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) pipeline. Here, we outline challenges, interventions, and assessments by the University of Texas MD Anders ...[more]

PMID: 29749848

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Project description:IntroductionMany recent mentoring initiatives have sought to help improve the proportion of underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities (URMs) in academic positions across the biomedical sciences. However, the intractable nature of the problem of underrepresentation suggests that many young scientists may require supplemental career development beyond what many mentors are able to offer. As an adjunct to traditional scientific mentoring, we created a novel academic career "coaching" intervention for PhD students in the biomedical sciences.ObjectiveTo determine whether and how academic career coaches can provide effective career-development-related learning experiences for URM PhD students in the biomedical sciences. We focus specifically on vicarious learning experiences, where individuals learn indirectly through the experiences of others.MethodThe intervention is being tested as part of a longitudinal randomized control trial (RCT). Here, we describe a nested qualitative study, using a framework approach to analyze data from a total of 48 semi-structured interviews from 24 URM PhD students (2 interviews per participant, 1 at baseline, 1 at 12-month follow-up) (16 female, 8 male; 11 Black, 12 Hispanic, 1 Native-American). We explored the role of the coach as a source of vicarious learning, in relation to the students' goal of being future biomedical science faculty.ResultsCoaches were resources through which most students in the study were able to learn vicariously about how to pursue, and succeed within, an academic career. Coaches were particularly useful in instances where students' research mentors are unable to provide such vicarious learning opportunities, for example because the mentor is too busy to have career-related discussions with a student, or because they have, or value, a different type of academic career to the type the student hopes to achieve.ImplicationsCoaching can be an important way to address the lack of structured career development that students receive in their home training environment.

Dataset Information

Institutional Interventions That Remove Barriers to Recruit and Retain Diverse Biomedical PhD Students.

Publications

Institutional Interventions That Remove Barriers to Recruit and Retain Diverse Biomedical PhD Students.

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