Investigation of Professional Coaching as an Intervention to Support the Success of URG Biomedical Ph.D. Students

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PROJECT SUMMARY: Diversity improves the ability to conduct research in all fields, but is especially crucial for biomedical research, essential to our efforts to improve the health of the nation. Despite decades of sustained effort, fewer than 2 percent of NIH primary investigators are Black, lower than the percentage of Black faculty at medical schools and much lower than the general population. The same holds true for Hispanics and other underrepresented groups (URGs). New, inventive solutions are thus urgently needed to promote the advancement of biomedical URGs trainees. Here we propose individualized professional coaching as a scalable and effective intervention. Coaching is a practice where a professionally trained coach helps the coachee clarify aspirations, increase self-awareness, establish plans, take action to achieve goals, and overcome challenges. Coaching research in a number of different academic settings has demonstrated improved self-efficacy and mental health, which are needed for sustained academic success. However, professional coaching has never been rigorously tested as an intervention for biomedical Ph.D. students, which is a significant gap in knowledge. Using hypothesis-driven research, we will test the following hypothesis: Biomedical Ph.D. students who receive individualized academic coaching will experience improved short-term outcomes (e.g., self-efficacy, resilience, reduced anxiety and depression) and sustained positive effects (degree persistence, goal attainment, ease in career transitions, and tangible scholarly outputs) compared to their controls. An interdisciplinary team at Rutgers with deep expertise in biomedical Ph.D. education and training, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), professional coaching, mental health, biostatistics, and rigorous mixed-methods educational research will test this hypothesis in the following three aims. For reproducibility, all experiments will be conducted at two institutions: Rutgers-New Brunswick (R-NB) and Rutgers-Newark (R-N). The experiments will be an academic year (AY)-long and utilize International Coaching Federation (ICF)-accredited coaches. URG and well-represented (WR) students will be randomly assigned to either control (no coaching) or experimental groups (coaching). In Aim 1, validated instruments will statistically measure short- and medium-term effects of professional coaching on goal attainment, self-efficacy and mental health (anxiety, depression, resilience). As a complementary approach, mixed methods will determine what gains occur, how they occur, and for what student populations they are most pronounced. Our hypothesis will be first tested at R-NB and then at R-N. In Aim 2, the coaching elements that lead to success will be defined including: i) dosage (frequency, duration) and ii) efficacy of Rutgers faculty/staff trained as ICF coaches. In Aim 3, long-term effects will be measured (e.g., time to degree, career transition, self- efficacy, and resilience). The proposed innovative research will have high impact by not only testing for the first time whether coaching is an efficacious and scalable intervention, but by also identifying the key elements needed for its implementation across institutions to address ongoing URG disparities in the workforce.