This article summarizes the outcomes of the second national conference on the Future of Bioscience Graduate and Postdoctoral Training. Five topics were addressed during the conference: diversity in leadership positions; mentoring; modernizing the curriculum; experiential learning; and the need for better data on trainees. The goal of the conference was to develop a consensus around these five topics and to recommend policies that can be implemented by academic and research institutions and federal funding agencies in the United States.

PhD-trained scientists are essential contributors to the workforce in diverse employment sectors that include academia, industry, government, and nonprofit organizations. Hence, best practices for training the future biomedical workforce are of national concern. Complementing coursework and laboratory research training, many institutions now offer professional training that enables career exploration and develops a broad set of skills critical to various career paths. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded academic institutions to design innovative programming to enable this professional development through a mechanism known as Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training (BEST). Programming at the NIH BEST awardee institutions included career panels, skill-building workshops, job search workshops, site visits, and internships. Because doctoral training is lengthy and requires focused attention on dissertation research, an initial concern was that students participating in additional complementary training activities might exhibit an increased time to degree or diminished research productivity. Metrics were analyzed from 10 NIH BEST awardee institutions to address this concern, using time to degree and publication records as measures of efficiency and productivity. Comparing doctoral students who participated to those who did not, results revealed that across these diverse academic institutions, there were no differences in time to degree or manuscript output. Our findings support the policy that doctoral students should participate in career and professional development opportunities that are intended to prepare them for a variety of diverse and important careers in the workforce.

Objective

The biomedical/behavioral sciences lag in the recruitment and advancement of students from historically underrepresented backgrounds. In 2014 the NIH created the Diversity Program Consortium (DPC), a prospective, multi-site study comprising 10 Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity (BUILD) institutional grantees, the National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN) and a Coordination and Evaluation Center (CEC). This article describes baseline characteristics of four incoming, first-year student cohorts at the primary BUILD institutions who completed the Higher Education Research Institute, The Freshmen Survey between 2015-2019. These freshmen are the primary student cohorts for longitudinal analyses comparing outcomes of BUILD program participants and non-participants.

Design

Baseline description of first-year students entering college at BUILD institutions during 2015-2019.

Setting

Ten colleges/universities that each received <$7.5mil/yr in NIH Research Project Grants and have high proportions of low-income students.

Participants

First-year undergraduate students who participated in BUILD-sponsored activities and a sample of non-BUILD students at the same BUILD institutions. A total of 32,963 first-year students were enrolled in the project; 64% were female, 18% Hispanic/Latinx, 19% African American/Black, 2% American Indian/Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, 17% Asian, and 29% White. Twenty-seven percent were from families with an income <$30,000/yr and 25% were their family's first generation in college.

Planned outcomes

Primary student outcomes to be evaluated over time include undergraduate biomedical degree completion, entry into/completion of a graduate biomedical degree program, and evidence of excelling in biomedical research and scholarship.

Conclusions

The DPC national evaluation has identified a large, longitudinal cohort of students with many from groups historically underrepresented in the biomedical sciences that will inform institutional/national policy level initiatives to help diversify the biomedical workforce.