A national effort to increase the number of researchers from underrepresented background in the biomedical and behavioral workforce is beginning to take shape after a recent meeting at UNT Health Science Center.
On October 22, the NIH announced the award of $2.2 million to UW-Madison to serve as the national hub for research mentor and mentee training within National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN). NRMN is a broader Diversity Program Consortium announced at the same time.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently announced awards of nearly $50 million to fund Enhancing the Diversity of the NIH-Funded Workforce, a bold initiative to better end the disparity of underrepresented researchers in biomedical sciences.
The Common Fund's Enhancing the Diversity of the NIH-Funded Workforce program is establishing a national Consortium to develop, implement, and evaluate approaches to encourage individuals from diverse backgrounds to enter into and persist in biomedical research careers.
https://commonfund.nih.gov/diversity/index
On Wednesday May 27th, John Matsui of the University of California at Berkeley gave a talk to attendees of the 3rd Key Personnel Meeting of the National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN), hosted at Boston College. The talk, entitled “An Outsider at the Table,” explored John’s philosophies of mentoring that have allowed him to build a successful program at UC Berkeley over the past 2 decades.
University of Texas at El Paso BUILDing SCHOLARS program announces their partnership with NRMN within their latest newsletter on July 24th, 2015, along with updates on activities and upcoming events.
The National Institutes of Health announced the award of nearly $31 million in fiscal year 2014 to develop new approaches that engage researches, including those from backgrounds underrepresented in biomedical sciences, and prepare them to thrive in the NIH-funded workforce.
http://www.nih.gov/news/health/oct2014/od-22.htm
Sciencemag.org interviews NRMN's Drs. Rick McGee and Christine Pfund about Dr. McGee's intervention, "Academy for Future Science Faculty," which approaches the task of supporting pairing students with mentors unrelated to their thesis work and promoting group meetings. the results of which were published December 2015 in the journal Academic Medicine.
Dr. Kola Okuyemi, esteemed Principal Investigator for NRMN's Professional Development Core, has been named University of Minnesota's first Endowed Chair for Health Equity Research in recognition of the tireless efforts he and his researchers have led in addressing community health and health equity.
The Chronicle of Higher Education's Vimal Patel covers the inception of the National Research Mentoring Network as an NIH response to the call to create a more diverse workforce among academic researchers across the NIH-funded biomedical sciences. With quotes from NRMN's Drs. Angela Byars-Winston and Jamboor Vishwanatha, notes about the research of NRMN's Dr. Rick McGee, and perspectives from brief interviews of an NRMN mentor and a mentee.