The overall goal of the Training Education and Mentoring in Science program (TEAM-Science) is to train graduate students from underrepresented racial and ethnic minority (URM) groups and students with disabilities (SWD) to conduct cutting-edge research as members and future leaders of the biomedical, behavioral and clinical research (BBCR) workforce while using TEAM-Science and UW-Madison as a ?living laboratory? to develop, evaluate, implement and disseminate theoretically-informed evidence-based practices to achieve this goal. Through its structured career development program TEAM-Science provides training not otherwise available at UW-Madison to bolster the engagement and career persistence of URMs and SWDs in BBCR careers. This proposed renewal reflects refinement of the core elements of TEAM-Science over the past 7 years (4 years in the first cycle and 3 years of the current cycle), comprising our structured career development and community of practice approach. In addition, new curricular content reflects: 1) evolving research on training future scientists and diversifying the scientific workforce; 2) the call to transform traditional approaches to graduate student training and mentoring; 3) contemporary scientific challenges including reproducibility and transparency, big data, and team science; and 4) responses to program evaluative feedback.
The specific aims of this new 5-year cycle are:
Specific Aim 1. Support 30 URM or SWD graduate students for 2 consecutive years each during their doctoral training in participating BBCR programs: 10 in years 1&2 of the funding cycle, 10 in year 3&4 of the funding cycle, and 10 in years 5&6 of the funding cycle including carryover; so that by the end of the funding cycle, 95% of these students will remain in or have earned a PhD, increasing the numbers of URM students in the participating graduate programs by at least 25% and SWD by as much as 100%.
Specific Aim 2. Develop and evaluate a formal professional development curriculum for students with content that addresses TEAM-Science's 8 Research Career Competencies; contributors to research career success and cultural navigation including research and coping self-efficacy, values affirmation, a growth mindset, and dispelling the constraints of cultural bias; contemporary scientific challenges including reproducibility and transparency, big data, and team science; and the extant opportunities for both research intensive or research related scientific career options.
Specific Aim 3. Enhance training for TEAM-Science research mentors to help them become bias literate, break the bias habit, and learn culturally responsive mentoring. TEAM-Science remains part of a comprehensive, organizational change approach to increasing scientific workforce diversity with multi-level (i.e. individual and institutional) interventions that are iteratively evaluated and strategically disseminated.
If the U.S. is to maintain its economic vitality in a world that is increasingly knowledge-based, it cannot afford to lose the contribution to the biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research enterprise of any talented mind. This proposal engages faculty mentors conducting cutting-edge research in a theoretically-informed approach to support the successful career persistence of graduate students who have historically been underrepresented in these research fields.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 60 publications
