Training Program in Population Studies

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Project Summary/Abstract The Population Research Center (PRC) of the University of Texas at Austin (UT) requests an 8th renewal of its T32 NICHD Training Grant in Population Studies. Our training program benefits from an outstanding and disciplinarily diverse faculty, from scientific depth in four key areas of Reproductive Health, Population Health, Family Demography, and Work, Education and Inequality, and from a strong extramural funding trajectory that provides the infrastructure, training opportunities, and professional culture necessary for the interdisciplinary training of the next generation of population scientists. PRC trainees' scientific and professional development is supported by: state-of-the-art administrative, computing, scientific, and program development resources; scientifically accomplished faculty collaborators and mentors; topical working groups; a brownbag series to encourage intellectual exchange and idea development; and dedicated space to encourage and facilitate training and research collaboration. We request funds for five pre-doctoral and two postdoctoral fellows for the 2018-2023 period of this grant, maintaining the current size of the program. The PRC offers an outstanding training environment and the center's accomplishments based on: a) the very enthusiastic response to our recent P2C center grant renewal; b) a grant portfolio of over $44 million; c) the significant number of new faculty members who are active and productive members; d) our research productivity in terms of journal articles, books, chapters, and conference presentations; e) the training program's success in recruiting minority faculty and students; and f) our recent substantial successes in placing our graduates in leading academic, postdoctoral, and research positions throughout the country. In a reflection of the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of population research at the PRC and throughout the discipline, we are expanding our training program to include predoctoral students from the department of Economics while continuing our training of students from Sociology, Human Development and Family Sciences (HDFS), and the LBJ School of Public Affairs. We expect the postdoctoral training program to continue to draw scholars from a range of disciplines, which in the past cycle included public health and social work. This application outlines the structure of the training program, including coursework and ethics training, and the PRC's outstanding record in the professional development and training of minority scholars. In sum, we request support to continue our success in serving the NICHD PDB's training mission to mentor highly trained, ethical, and productive researchers who will impact our collective understanding of core aspects of reproductive health, population health, and demography.