Last week, the Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) of NIH released two reports that are very relevant to the NIGMS missions of supporting research training and promoting a diverse biomedical workforce. The reports, produced by working groups with impressive membership rosters, have many elements in common with our training strategic plan.
For example, the report from the Biomedical Research Workforce Working Group suggests that institutions provide graduate students with experiences to better prepare them for various career options, recommends testing ways to shorten the Ph.D. training period, and calls for individual development plans for postdocs regardless of the NIH grant mechanism that supports them.
The report from the Working Group on Diversity in the Biomedical Research Workforce affirms the importance of a diverse biomedical workforce and NIH’s role in helping to achieve it.
NIH’s Sally Rockey, who co-chaired one of the working groups, has a blog post on these ACD reports, plus an additional report on large biomedical research datasets.
We look forward to working with other parts of NIH to advance our shared commitment to training and diversity.
Filed under: Director’s Messages, NIH, Workforce Development and Diversity
Permalink: https://loop.nigms.nih.gov/index.php/2012/06/19/workforce-development-and-diversity-recommendations-to-nih-resonate-with-nigms-training-strategic-plan-2/
I’m all in favor of a more diverse workforce, but just dumping more and more obligations on training grant directors is a not the best way to achieve it. In fact, since women tend to be over-represented as TG directors, it may backfire by leaving female faculty with even less time to do the paper-writing & R01-fetching that those in charge of promotions value above all else.
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NIH issued a news release that summarizes its planned actions in response to these ACD reports.
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