Wednesday, January 15, 2025
1/15/2025
Project Summary/Abstract There is an urgent need to increase the numbers and diversity of prepared graduates joining the biomedical workforce through systematic and impactful evidence-based approaches that follow scientific practices. Florida International University's Project iCREATE (investigating Career & Research Experience Access Through Evidence) will address the lack of diversity in biomedical careers by designing, implementing and testing innovative interventions; as well as investigating the effect of high-impact practices (e.g., different research experience formats and career development opportunities) on students' career goals, career strategies, and key student career intent and action outcomes. FIU is an urban Hispanic-serving research-intensive (R1) public institution with over 58,000 students, 80% of which are from groups that are underrepresented in the biomedical workforce. iCREATE centers on generating evidence for two scalable interventions that will leverage FIU's extensive expertise in student success, diversity, equity, and inclusion and focus on programming that transforms students' access to biomedical research experiences and career awareness and preparation. iCREATE aims to 1) develop and implement the following interventions: Careers+, a workshop for students focused on career development strategies and biomedical career awareness, and CURE+ which expands a one semester CURE into a two-semester advanced course-based research experience; 2) evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed interventions and current research experiences available to select students at our institution; and 3) perform a qualitative longitudinal study of undergraduates’ development of career goals and strategies and the impact of research experiences and career development opportunities on student career goal trajectories. iCREATE will advance our understanding of best-practices in preparing a diverse biomedical workforce by 1) developing and testing evidence-based programs, thus, laying the groundwork for implementing similar efforts in life science curricula to increase minority representation in the biomedical workforce; 2) conducting comparative analyses across research experience formats, and across student demographics, to directly compare the impact of various experiences on student outcomes; 3) focusing on the impact of research experiences and career development opportunities on students from underrepresented backgrounds, an area that is significantly understudied, and 4) following students longitudinally to comprehensively understand how students develop career strategies and factors that trigger the intent and actions to pursue a career in biomedical research.
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