UAB/TU FIRST Administrative Core

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The UAB/TU FIRST Partnership seeks to transform culture at our two partner institutions by building a self-reinforcing community of scientists committed to diversity and inclusive excellence. To do so, we will hire clusters of new faculty in areas of mutual and/or complementary strengths, engage them as a cohort focused on health disparities. Following our conceptual model, we will surround them with interpersonal, organizational, and community support to help them establish successful research programs to secure R01-level funding. In addition, we will leverage this program to enact policy, culture and environmental changes aimed at reinforcing a culture of diversity and inclusive excellence in biomedical research at both UAB and TU. The Administrative Core of the UAB/TU FIRST Partnership will provide: 1) infrastructure, staff, and processes for program management, including overall management, fiscal management, and coordination among cores and the partner institutions; 2) development and maintenance of a support infrastructure, including internal and external communications infrastructure; 3) management of recruitment and hiring for diversity and inclusive excellence, and 4) reporting and collaboration with the NIH, including representation on the National FIRST Executive Steering Committee. This Core will function under the direction of four MPIs (Drs. Selwyn Vickers, contact PI; Mona Fouad, Clayton Yates, and Raegan Durant), with significant institutional support and commitment from both UAB and Tuskegee. UAB has committed $17.4 million per year in recruitment, hiring, and salary/startup support and another $2 million in related support that will contribute to the goals of the Partnership and TU has committed $200,000 in support each year. This commitment will allow the UAB/TU FIRST Partnership to transform culture at our institutions by building a self-reinforcing community of scientists committed to diversity and inclusive excellence, and to achieve significant systemic and sustainable institutional culture change by achieving the following specific aims: 1) provide central management of all UAB/TU FIRST Partnership activities and committees to manage personnel, allocate financial resources to ensure effective administration and equitable distribution of resources, and ensure integration of cores and collaboration between the partner institutions; 2) establish and maintain UAB/TU FIRST Partnership support infrastructure, including communications channels and a website and collaborative platform to facilitate interaction between leadership, committees, Benjamin-Carver Scientists, and collaborators; 3) develop and implement a cluster hiring plan that integrates strategic needs identified by UAB and TU, including recruitment, interviewing, hiring, and retention protocols; and 4) improve the institutional climate of diversity and inclusive excellence at each institution through targeted interventions guided by the Social Ecological Model (SEM) levels, including the integration of UAB/TU FIRST Partnership lessons learned into institutional processes for strategic planning, hiring, retention, and promotion.