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Suggested Citation:"STATEMENT BY JUDSON D. SHERIDAN." National Research Council. 1994. Meeting the Nation's Needs for Biomedical and Behavioral Scientists: Summary of the 1993 Public Hearings. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4958.
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Page 86
Suggested Citation:"STATEMENT BY JUDSON D. SHERIDAN." National Research Council. 1994. Meeting the Nation's Needs for Biomedical and Behavioral Scientists: Summary of the 1993 Public Hearings. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4958.
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Page 87

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APPENDIX D 86 This problem is deep-rooted in our society and needs to be addressed far before graduate education. Educational problems for minority students appear in middle years (grades 5-8), and there is substantial difficulty making the transition into high school following eighth grade. Even if the transition is successful, it is most likely into an inner city high school where a diluted version of education is provided. In order to compete academically, such students often require remediation in math and english. If such students do complete the baccalaureate, they are not likely to pursue an academic career since role models and guidance are lacking. In response to this dilemma a number of colleges and universities have united in a “Leadership Alliance” to “…improve the status of underrepresented students and faculty at various stages of the educational pipeline.”1 The program has four goals including: a kindergarten to grade 12 initiative to raise academic standards; a program to increase minority undergraduate applications by encouraging academically oriented programs in primary, middle, and high school; a program to increase graduate school application by supporting continued academic interest during the undergraduate years; and finally, a program to advance and enrich the development of faculty. I am most familiar with the program to increase graduate student applications by a summer research early identification program. This program brings some 40 students to Brown for a ten week summer research “experience.” The students are from predominantly Black schools and participate in a highly structured summer program. I have had such students in the laboratory for the past two years, and one was recently admitted into the Molecular and Cell Biology and Biochemistry Graduate Program at Brown. My understanding is that most of the funding for this program is from private foundations. My point is that, at least for minorities, we don’t need to “reinvent the wheel.” There are successful programs for development of minority scientists which should be encouraged and supported. With regard to assurance of high quality training environments, I believe there are several things which NRSA can provide, including increased funding for seminar programs and research retreats, which would provide relatively inexpensive exposure to real research for the trainees. Furthermore, I think real consideration must be given to limiting the number of trainees per laboratory. I believe the NRSA training programs are vital for the maintenance of high quality research training within our universities. If we do not continue to pay the price for these programs, we will surely suffer the consequences. NOTE 1. For a copy of the Leadership Alliance Prospectus, contact Dr. Shank, Brown University, School of Medicine, Providence, RI, 02912, 401/863-2765. STATEMENT BY JUDSON D. SHERIDAN4 The University of Missouri-Columbia, a Carnegie Research University, has predoctoral and postdoctoral students holding individual NRSA awards and administers both predoctoral and postdoctoral training grants. We regard these awards as an important source of support for accomplishing our educational mission. These comments both reflect a campus research administration perspective and encapsulate the views of the Principal Investigators of the various training grants on the campus. From our perspective, a discussion of issues relating to the training of young scientists must be framed in the context of overall funding for biomedical and behavioral research. Sufficient resources for the general support of biomedical and behavioral research are important for implementing and sustaining an effective, overall training strategy. Thus, it is important to continue to press the case for increases in federal support for biomedical and behavioral research. Even in the absence of systematically collected data, anecdotal information regarding the impact of the shortfall in resources on the attractiveness of a career in biomedical research is sufficient to raise genuine concern. Perceptions of insufficient resources clearly are discouraging highly capable people from entering research-oriented track and are even causing some who 4 Testimony presented by John McCormick, Department of Organic Chemistry, University of Missouri, who co-authored this statement. Please note that Dr. Sheridan is no longer at the University of Missouri-Columbia and is now Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of Maine. Dr. John McCormick is currently the Interim Vice Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate School University of Missouri-Columbia.

APPENDIX D 87 already have entered training programs to leave for other career directions. A recommendation logically follows: ensure that training funds are directed to institutions that offer young scientists positive, nurturing environments. These environments should not only have an institutional commitment to supporting research, but also have a strong record of garnering sufficient support from external resources to ensure a focus on and fostering of the intellectual rewards and excitement that derive from involvement in the research enterprise. Another resource issue is important. The stipends provided by the NRSA training program at both the predoctoral and postdoctoral levels are generally insufficient. As a nation, we will attract our “best and brightest” only by offering stipends that show we value a research track as highly as we value other directions that compete for their professional commitment. If limitations imposed by the funds available for these training programs make it impossible to set competitive stipends, then we recommend that these programs be structured to ensure that by some other mechanism, such as private-sector partnerships, the stipends reach competitive levels. Relying on the simplistic solution of institutional cost-sharing and add-on funds is unrealistic. At the very least, the restrictions regarding the use of other federal funds for institutional cost-sharing should be relaxed. Beyond the level of resources available within the training environment, another very important aspect is the existence of a critical mass, with respect to both students and faculty. In some cases, special expertise that is particularly appropriate for a training grant may exist at an institution where critical mass is a concern. In such cases, mechanisms, within the institution or among institutions, should be formalized to ensure interactions among sufficient numbers of students and faculty. Furthermore, the need for training young scientists who have multidisciplinary perspectives leads to the desirability of formalizing arrangements for exposure to related disciplines. For example, formal arrangements could be made for interactions between trainees supported by different grants at an institution and for short-term exchanges of trainees with other institutions. In our view, greater emphasis should be placed on enhancing funding for predoctoral support. The current balance of postdoctoral/predoctoral support has two unfortunate ramifications: (1) there is a relatively large pool of postdoctoral biomedical researchers who move from one temporary appointment to another; and (2) there is a need to more effectively recruit the highest quality students into doctoral programs leading to research careers. There is another significant result from the current balance of postdoctoral/predoctoral support: the paradoxical position of strong emphasis on the recruiting of underrepresented groups into postdoctoral training programs but insufficient numbers of members of those groups in the predoctoral pools from which the postdocs are to be recruited. Thus, shifting the balance of resources split between postdoctoral and predoctoral training programs more toward the latter also will address another issue: bringing more members of underrepresented groups into the biomedical and behavioral research community. An emphasis on predoctoral support will dovetail well with the nation’s need to attract the “best and brightest” into clinically relevant research. One strategy for stimulating interest of our young scientists in clinically relevant problems would be to structure training programs to expose trainees to clinical areas most closely associated with their particular basic science interests. We recommend giving greater attention and resources to M.D./Ph.D. programs as a strategy to attract prospective biomedical scientists into research careers. This may be a particularly useful strategy for addressing the need to recruit women and minorities in biomedical and behavioral research careers. Fellowships for M.D./ Ph.D. programs and for post-M.D./Ph.D. programs may be considerably more attractive than those that are limited to graduate and post-graduate training. Direct augmentation of existing individual project grants might also be an effective approach to recruiting members of underrepresented groups into research. On our campus, the National Science Foundation’s “Research Experiences for Undergraduates” program has placed Principal Investigators in the dual roles of recruiters and mentors of young scientists. The personal attention that this approach fosters can “make the difference” that directs a bright student into a career in research. We recommend continuation and even expansion of the recent emphasis on training in professional ethics and scientific conduct. Recent, prolonged efforts to establish uniform guidelines for ethics in research underscore the complexities of establishing codes of behavior. The emergence of a biotechnology-based

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