| IN
THIS ISSUE . . .
October 9, 2007
Funding Opportunities/Research Administration
News
Meetings
The NIGMS Division of Minority Opportunities
in Research (MORE) administers research and research training
programs aimed at increasing the number of minority biomedical
and behavioral scientists. For more information about the
Division, see http://www.nigms.nih.gov/minority.
NIGMS is one of the National Institutes
of Health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
By supporting basic biomedical research and training nationwide,
NIGMS lays the foundation for advances in disease diagnosis,
treatment, and prevention.
All MORE grantees are automatically subscribed
to this e-newsletter; other interested individuals are encouraged
to subscribe. To subscribe, change subscription options, or
unsubscribe, visit the Minority Programs Update subscription
page at https://list.nih.gov/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=nigms-mpu-newsletter&A=1.
Subscribe to the RSS version of Minority
Programs Update by selecting this
XML link and following your news reader's instructions
for adding a feed.
Got MORE news to share? Contact Susan
Athey or Jilliene
Mitchell at 301-496-7301. From the
MORE Director: What Counts as Success?
What should count as success when programs of the MORE Division
come up for renewal? Applicants want to know. Reviewers want
to know. Many argue for a broad interpretation of what constitutes
success. We often hear that a student who goes on to become
a high school teacher should be considered a success. We could
say the same for a student who goes on to obtain a clinical
degree. Many factors, including the economic climate and job
opportunities, influence student career choices.
The National Advisory General Medical Sciences Council MORE
Division Working Group reviewed the programs of the MORE Division
at several meetings beginning in August 2005. One of the recommendations
in its report
was: The emphasis of the MORE program should be to increase
the number of URM Ph.D.’s, with a high priority being
to promote an increase in the number of URM faculty in colleges
and universities. This recommendation sets an ambitious
goal for the MORE Division and focuses attention on an endpoint
that is achieved by only a small fraction of students of any
race/ethnicity. But is becoming a faculty member with R01
funding the only outcome that will be considered a success?
What about the wide array of other professional outcomes that
represent huge accomplishments for our students?
I believe that the recommendation of the Council Working
Group is not saying that other outcomes are not valuable.
Rather, it is stressing that we need to address the particularly
glaring paucity in representation of minorities on the faculty
of research-intensive institutions and conducting NIH-funded
research.
So how do we meet the high expectations expressed by the
Council Working Group but still value the contributions and
decisions of individual students? The key is to focus on institutional
improvement in the number of students going on to a Ph.D.
Current revisions to MORE programs emphasize improvement
in institutional outcomes as the major objective. An implication
is that the program must have institutional support and be
consistent with institutional plans for improvement. We expect
that the institution will take a lead in the evaluation of
program activities. Thus, evaluation is primarily for institutional
improvement.
Do we still have high expectations of individual students
supported by MORE programs? Yes. After all, they have been
selected for their interest and potential and they have received
the benefit of MORE-funded activities. But from our perspective,
the career outcomes of individual supported students are not
as fundamental to our definition of success as are improvements
in institutional outcomes.
A skeptic might ask, “Do you mean that if half of my
students supported on RISE go on to medical school, that’s
OK?” My answer is an emphatic yes, as long as the number
of students going on to Ph.D.s and research careers is improving
substantially. Another skeptic might ask what I mean by substantially.
I would answer by saying that if your institution
(not just its MARC or RISE program) is sending five students
on to earn a Ph.D. in the biomedical or behavioral sciences
per year, we would hope you could make that 10 students per
year after 8 years of funding. If your institution is sending
less than 5 percent of its science baccalaureate degree students
on to a Ph.D. degree, it is below average. Can it improve?
If minorities at your institution are less likely than non-minorities
to go on to a Ph.D., can you eliminate the disparity?
Success, then, is improving the institutional outcomes by
a variety of measures. We endeavor to make MORE programs as
flexible as possible to allow each institution to design,
implement, and evaluate ways to improve. Aid to enable students
to conduct research continues to be an important component
of our programs. But we hope that institutions will see our
programs as opportunities to do more than just work with a
select handful of students. In this way, we can achieve the
Council Working Group’s goal of a 10 percent improvement
per year in the number of underrepresented minorities earning
Ph.D.s in the biomedical and behavioral sciences.
As always, I welcome your comments.
Clifton A. Poodry
Director, MORE Division
National Institute of General Medical Sciences
poodryc@nigms.nih.gov
301-594-3900
Comment on the NIGMS Strategic
Plan NIGMS is engaged in a strategic planning activity
that will guide its decision-making over the next 5 years.
So far, NIGMS has solicited broad input from the scientific
community—both individuals and organizations—and
developed a draft plan, posted at http://www.nigms.nih.gov/About/StrategicPlan/.
Input from the MORE community included comments at an April
2007 strategic planning conference by program directors Leticia
Marquez-Magana of San Francisco State University and Carlos
Gutierrez of California State University, Los Angeles.
Comments on the draft plan will be accepted until October
16. It is not necessary to be an NIGMS grant recipient to
provide input, so please inform your colleagues, including
graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, of this opportunity.
Submissions using the Web site form are anonymous.
We expect the final plan to be available in January 2008.
MORE News
Singh Named MORE Special Initiatives
Branch Chief
Shiva Singh, a program director in the MORE Division since
2004, has been appointed chief of the newly formed Special
Initiatives Branch. This brings the number of branches in
the MORE Division to three: Minority Access to Research Careers
(MARC), Minority Biomedical Research Support (MBRS), and MORE
Special Initiatives (SI). Activities that fall under the SI
Branch include the Bridges programs, the Postbaccalaureate
Research Education Program, Institutional Research and Academic
Career Development Awards, Native American Research Centers
for Health, Research on Interventions that Promote Research
Careers, diversity supplements, and faculty development awards.
National Academies Interventions Workshop
Report Available
A report from the National Academies' May
2007 workshop "Understanding Interventions that Encourage
Minorities to Pursue Research Careers: Major Questions and
Appropriate Methods," is now available. The workshop
examined the current knowledge base of research related to
the interventions that influence the participation of underrepresented
minorities in the biomedical and behavioral sciences and provided
technical assistance to those wishing to apply for the NIGMS
Research on Interventions that Promote Research Careers (R01)
program. A full report from the meeting is available at http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12022#toc.
Living the Computing Life
NIGMS announces its newest science education booklet, Computing
Life. In this free booklet, readers learn about the many
ways scientists are using the power of computers to expand
our knowledge of biology and medicine.
Order
or view Computing
Life
Other NIGMS
publications
Funding Opportunities/Research Administration
News Join the Community for
Advanced Graduate Training
NIGMS has developed a new, Web-based tool to facilitate interactions
between MARC U-STAR T34 programs and NIGMS T32 predoctoral
training grant programs. The new tool, called the Community
for Advanced Graduate Training, is designed to help MARC students
find summer research training opportunities and potential
graduate (Ph.D.-level) programs in NIGMS-sponsored T32 programs,
which are at research-intensive institutions. The tool is
also designed to assist T32 program directors in identifying
and recruiting MARC students who may be interested in their
institution’s research training programs. For more information
about the system, contact Shawn
Drew at 301-594-3900.
Bridges
and PREP Programs Reannounced
The MORE Division recently reissued funding opportunity announcements
for the Bridges to the Baccalaureate, Bridges to the Doctorate,
and Postbaccalaureate Research Education programs. For more
information about the programs, click on the links below or
contact Shiva Singh
at 301-594-3900.
Upcoming Receipt Dates
December 5—MARC Predoctoral Fellowships (F31)
December 13—NRSA Fellowships to Promote Diversity in
Health-Related Research (F31)
January 10—MARC Ancillary Training Activities (T36)
January 16—MBRS Research Initiative for Scientific
Enhancement (R25)
January 18—Bridges to the Baccalaureate and Bridges
to the Doctorate (R25); MBRS Support of Competitive Research
(SCORE) Research Advancement Award (SC1), Pilot Project Award
(SC2), and Research Continuance Award (SC3)
NOTE: SCORE applications are now being submitted electronically.
For more information, see http://era.nih.gov/ElectronicReceipt.
January 22—Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program
(R25)
February 21—MBRS Initiative for Maximizing Student
Diversity (R25)
For more information on these programs, see the MORE Division
Web page, http://www.nigms.nih.gov/minority.
Meetings
We look forward to seeing you at two NIGMS-supported meetings
this fall. Be sure to stop by our exhibit booth to meet with
MORE staff, pick up NIGMS' latest science education materials,
and learn about NIGMS funding opportunities.
Society for Advancement of Chicanos
and Native Americans in Science
October 11-14, 2007 in Kansas City, MO
http://www.sacnas.org
Annual Biomedical Research Conference
for Minority Students
November 7-10, 2007 in Austin, TX
http://www.abrcms.org
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