Poster Q12 - Lessons Learned from Our First NIH Enhancing Science, Technology, EnginEering, and Math Educational Diversity Cohort

Introduction: The goal of the NIH Enhancing Science, Technology, EnginEering, and Math Educational Diversity (ESTEEMED) Research Education Experiences (R25) program is to provide early engagement of undergraduate students in order to enhance the diversity of the biomedical research workforce. However, institutions in emerging areas of majority-minority populations have not produced proportional gains in STEM. As a state with the 8th highest percentage emerging majority-minority population, there is special opportunity and obligation in Georgia to fulfill the ESTEEMED mission.

Materials and

Methods: The components in the two-year program are illustrated in Figure 1. The program begins with a five-week Summer Bridge in which the participants are resident at the university in the summer before their freshmen year. During their freshmen year, they stay together in the same dormitory as a Living/Learning Community, they live together for the whole year. They take a one-credit hour introduction to the university that has been tailored to introduce the idea of One Health [Burg, BMES 2024]. The students pursue a light design project and shadow students in the engineering capstone design during the Senior Design Internship. The students continue shadowing in the second semester. During the first summer, students are encouraged to find a meaningful experience, some did research, but are asked to complete a project in which they share their knowledge and excitement about STEM with a community group. The second year begins with helping them appreciate their potential role in research, preparing them with resume and cover letters, and then ii) helping them make connections for on campus research and ii) supporting them to apply for Summer Research Experiences (typically REU) summers programs, which would take place in their second summer. The students also work as a team to identify and design solutions for an important biomedical problem in the One Health Design Challenge. There were five engineering students in our first cohort, representing mechanical and biomedical majors. Their personalities, backgrounds, and goals were very different, not lending to analytic analysis of themes.

Results, Conclusions, and Discussions: When we stepped back to view the program holistically, there are several emergent themes of note:
1. Personal connections are paramount. Reflections by the students during the final program recounted moments when they connected with faculty members at events such as the escape room or dinner. We realize it is difficult to plan for these ad hoc connections, but we must make ourselves available in the program to capitalize on such opportunities.
2. Important topics must be threads that recur throughout the program. A serious mistake was dedicating a day of the summer bridge to career planning. We had great content, including an excellent consultant, to describe the process and benefits of an Individual Development Plan (IDP) and help them write a first draft. We found that the basic ideas and tools were long forgotten at the end of the summer. An approach that provides a schedule of just-in-time training and short career discussions will be more interesting, impactful, and ultimately more effective in promoting career development.
3. Too much design is too much. We predicated many of the activities on the idea that design projects will excite the participants by showing that their skills and efforts can be directed to solving real problems. We still support this hypothesis but add that the design exercise needs to be authentic and require struggle.
4. Early stage (freshmen) students have very limited skills in time management, relationship building, prioritization, professional awareness and accountability, communication and expectation setting. It is important to take the time to provide a basic introduction to each.
5. The program had a definite impact on participant attitude toward biomedical careers. One student, for example, began the program with focus on mechanical engineering but by the end of the first year could clearly see the connections to biomedical engineering.
6. Ultimately, we had to have faith in the professional development process and realize that change is often slow; however, we must also consider and react to precious feedback.

Reference:
1. Burg, T., Burg, K.J.L., 2023 Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Annual Meeting, Seattle, WA, (October, 2023). Podium Presentation.

Acknowledgements (Optional): Funding was provided by the Harbor Lights Endowment and NIH 1R25EB031570-01 “University of Georgia ESTEEMED: Mentored Experiential Research to Promote Diversity in Biomedical Engineering and Science”.