Enhancing Research Training through Empowerment, Resilience, and Civic Engagement

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UPR-IPERT Project Summary The US faces the urgent need to develop a diverse biomedical science workforce, trained with the breadth and flexibility necessary to meet unpredictable future challenges in health science. The University of Puerto Rico system is the bachelor's source institution of ~15% of US Hispanic PhDs in the natural and social sciences, although only ~4.5% of US Hispanic undergraduates in these disciplines attend UPR. Therefore UPR is well positioned to help meet this national need. With IPERT the UPR will be able to prepare more undergraduates and junior faculty to meet the nation's biomedical research needs. The program targets undergraduate students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds and disciplines not usually linked to biomedical research, as well as junior faculty members at Predominantly Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs) who have not benefited from training programs commonly available at research-intensive institutions. UPR-IPERT will expand and enhance existing training efforts by developing participants (not just selecting talent) with innovative activities that have a multi- campus reach and that fill unmet gaps in existing research training programs to achieve system- wide impacts. UPR-IPERT will be administered by UPR-Cayey in collaboration with UPR- Humacao, the two undergraduate units in UPR with most experience in research training programs. A collaborative partnership with a) the other nine UPR campuses; b) the Yale- CienciaPR network and the NIH National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN); and c) the multi-campus training programs NIH-Puerto Rico-INBRE and NSF-Puerto Rico Luis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation gives UPR-IPERT a wide reach across public and private universities, and among Puerto Ricans/ Hispanics at mainland institutions. The larger objective of UPR-IPERT is to enhance responsiveness to the changing needs of the biomedical workforce with a wide-reaching, multi-faceted, and multidisciplinary training model suited for PUIs. UPR- IPERT will complement existing training programs with a phased approach that goes from recruitment, to retention, to skills development, and to dissemination and outreach. Diversity, resilience, multidisciplinarity, empowerment, and social commitment will be the guiding principles. The Specific Aims are: 1) Recruit for diversity, by targeting undergraduates from socioeconomically disadvantage backgrounds, and students and faculty from non-traditional disciplines using innovative activities including the IPERT Theater Co. 2) Build resilience for perseverance through the pipeline through online support networks, coaching, mentoring, and writing groups. 3) Build multidisciplinary skills for empowerment and versatility, through a module series and more intensive courses on research skills for different social and natural sciences, and quantitative skills workshops. 4) Provide social insight for increased social and scientific commitment, through modules on the social context of health, community outreach, and travel to meetings for broader dissemination. UPR-IPERT is expected serve as a model program and to make a significant contribution in training Hispanic biomedical scientists.