University of Wisconsin-Madison Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program (PREP) for increasing diversity in STEM

PROJECT SUMMARY The University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) is a vibrant research institution that seeks to establish a one-year Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program (UW-PREP) to develop skills for underrepresented minority (URM) students to be successful in gaining leadership roles in the biomedical workforce. The goals of this program are to prepare students to apply, matriculate, and then graduate from outstanding doctoral (Ph.D.) programs from the UW and throughout the country. While the UW hosts a wide range of URM STEM initiatives ranging from high school through undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral and faculty programs, the establishment of UW-PREP will address a gap in our programming. The mission of the UW-PREP is threefold: 1) to provide opportunities and evidence-based platforms for participants to learn how to design and conduct impactful, rigorous and reproducible scientific research; 2) to foster the growth of participants in areas of professional development that promote self-awareness and advocacy, build science communication skills, and reinforce an identity as a scientist; and 3) to advance an inclusive culture of mentoring, research integrity, and life-long learning. The UW-PREP will be established with a primary focus on a mentored research experience in which participants will be immersed in developing skills needed to design and conduct rigorous, ethical research. The UW has outstanding resources and infrastructure in place to support innovative and impactful research. PREP Research Education Activities will be designed on recent UW-developed and published Entering Research curricula, a collection of evidence-based active learning activities. Activities will reinforce the importance of rigor and reproducibility and foundations of responsible conduct of research that will also be inherent to their mentored laboratory experience. They are also designed to help students devise their Individual Development Plan (IDP) and will incorporate Professional Development activities to build STEM-specific social capital to navigate the hidden curriculum of academic research spaces in a large research institution. Faculty advisors and benchside mentors will participate in evidence-based Mentor Training curricula designed around six core competencies: Align Expectations, Communicate Effectively, Assess Understanding, Address Equity and Inclusion, Foster Independence, and Promote Professional Development. PREP Leadership and funded, diverse faculty enjoy outstanding institutional support and coordination of evidence-based curricula to build a PREP that will help to launch exceptionally trained and confident URM scholars into the biomedical workforce.