CWRU Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program

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PROJECT SUMMARY The Post-baccalaureate Research Education Program (PREP) is a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded program for recent college graduates from diverse backgrounds interested in earning a PhD in scientific disciplines related to biomedical research. PREP is a one-year structured program focused on research experiences needed for competitive graduate school applications and preparing Scholars for the first years of graduate school with PhD or MD/PhD programs. NIH PREP was established in 2001, and today there are at least 47 active PREP programs across the United States. CasePREP, the Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) PREP in Cleveland, Ohio, is one of those active programs. As part of its existing curriculum, CasePREP encourages and helps foster Scholar-Scholar, Scholar-graduate student, and Scholar-faculty mentoring connections through a variety of in-person mechanisms including social events, symposia, conferences, journal clubs, and classes. These mechanisms, once constant throughout the academic year, were eliminated or drastically reformatted in March 2020 with the confirmed cases of SARS- CoV-2 infections resulting in the first official COVID-19 cases in Cuyahoga County, home of CWRU. While the state’s stay-at-home order was short lived and provided exceptions to research, the impact on trainees was both immediate and long-lasting. Now impacting at least three CasePREP Scholar cohorts, the ongoing pandemic has revealed a crucial need for the development and delivery of revised curriculum to include new content related to resiliency and other non-academic topics needed for personal wellness and sustained career success. To develop this new content, we propose in this supplement to leverage the existing National Institute of Health (NIH) Becoming a Resilient Scientist Series, offered by the Office of Intramural Training & Education (OITE). The webinar series and discussions cover the following topics: Introduction to Resilience and Wellness (Unit 1); Exploring our Self-Talk: Cognitive Distortions and Imposter Fears (Unit 2); Self-Advocacy and Assertiveness for Scientists (Unit 3); Developing Feedback Resilience (Unit 4); and Managing Up to Maximize Mentoring Relationships (Unit 5). All webinars, each two hours in length, are available on-demand through YouTube. We will augment the webinar series, to be delivered to CasePREP Scholars in Spring 2024, with reading material specific to each topic for the one-hour in-person discussion groups. We will also offer 2023-2024 CasePREP Scholars access to the University Health and Counseling Services. The impact of the new curriculum content and access to expanded services will be quantitatively measured using pre- and post- psychometric surveys as well as qualitatively measured through transcribed small group interviews. We will disseminate the new course content and plans for assessment through an abstract submission at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minoritized Scientists (ABRCMS) and results of the assessment through a peer-reviewed published manuscript. The new curriculum content will be disseminated and delivered to at least two existing training programs at CWRU and be available to all CWRU and non-CWRU training program via our published materials in the scientific literature and the CWRU PREP website.