Training Grant Data

Several of our faculty mentors are pre-tenure, having begun their independent careers at UB in the last 5 years. UB provides several levels of mentorship for pre-tenure faculty, beginning with university-wide programming through the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs. This mentoring process begins with new-faculty orientation and the “New Faculty Academy” program which offers two curriculum tracks, each over four months in alternating semesters. The first is a scholarship, writing, and publishing curriculum that provides content on writing for publication, grant writing and research compliance (including IRB and data management). The second is an education curriculum which builds a foundation in curriculum development, andragogy and assessment.

Per the UB Faculty Mentoring policy adopted in 2010, each decanal unit is responsible for developing specialized faculty mentoring programs catered to the needs of those faculty. Within the Jacobs School of Medicine, there is a unit-wide faculty mentoring committee that meets with all pre-tenure faculty on a yearly basis. The major focus of this committee is to assess the development of the pre-tenure faculty member’s CV and trajectory toward meeting unit and UB criteria for tenure and promotion to Associate Professor. Each department is also responsible for mentoring pre-tenure faculty, as well as faculty at the Associate level as they approach promotion to Professor. The departmental mentoring is the most intense, with assessment of CV, project trajectory, plans for grant proposal submissions, plans for paper submissions, assessment of commitment to service and teaching as well as general mentorship guidance as needed. In addition, pre-tenure faculty are encouraged to provide grant proposals and personal statements to colleagues for assessment and editing prior to submission. In some cases, when additional expertise is needed, pre-tenure faculty proposals are reviewed by external evaluators procured by the department chairs.

Students matriculating through PPBS take the recently revised PPBS curriculum in the first semester, including companion courses BMS 515 and 516, Fundamentals of Biomedical Sciences. BMS 515 is a survey-type course that builds a strong foundation in biochemistry, cell and molecular biology and incorporates content from a broad set of disciplines that include microbiology, immunology, structural biology, neuroscience, pharmacology, physiology, bioinformatics and biomedical informatics. Student knowledge is assessed in two major ways: weekly homework assignments that provide thought problems for students to solve and require effort beyond the didactic material presented in the course lectures, and two term papers on a topic that is unique to each student. They are assigned a disease-associated genetic locus at the start of the course. The mid-term paper focuses on the molecular basis of disease by that locus (disease mutations, impact on protein expression and functions, impacts on cell function, etc.). The final paper then asks students to investigate the biological impacts of the mutation at the organismal level, incorporating aspects of physiology, organ systems and pathology. BMS 516 takes select topics from the survey course and breaks them out in depth first in a didactic lecture, and then as a paper discussion. This curriculum is innovative in that students are not asked to memorize information, but rather synthesize information, solve problems, design experiments, and communicate science in a concise yet thorough manner. A course in the responsible conduct of research is also taken, and described below.

In the spring semester, students take an intro to scientific literature course and begin to take electives that satisfy core requirements for Microbiology and Immunology, Biochemistry, Structural Biology or Oral Biology. These include Bacteriology, Immunology, Protein Structure and Function or Gene Expression.

Throughout the PPBS year, students identify potential mentors through laboratory rotations. Students are provided a list of faculty with funding to take a student in that particular year. Students meet with potential mentors during the first two weeks of the semester, and based on their ranked choices submitted to the program director, students are matched to mentors for the 7-week rotations. The process is repeated for each of the four rotations. During these rotations, students can explore different disciplines among the 11 PhD programs fed by PPBS. Our program faculty represent four of those departmental programs. Only students that match to a mentor that is a program faculty in this proposed training program will be eligible for support.

Within the UB, a long-standing professional development program has been and will continue to be available to all trainees in PhD Programs. CLIMB, Collaborative Learning and Integrated Mentoring in the Biosciences was developed at Northwestern University by Margarita Dubocovich, PhD, and was brought to the Jacobs School when she moved to UB. As of 2023, the program is run out of the Office of Biomedical Education led by by Anyango Kamina, PhD, Assistant Dean for Student Development and Academic Enhancement. The program provides a foundational curriculum in professional development that includes writing abstracts, preparing posters, and writing personal statements for fellowship applications. Additional content is geared to help students adapt to life in graduate school, to cope with stress and anxiety, and to develop communication and networking skills. In addition to the main program, CLIMB also offers a series of Professional Development workshops called the Professional Development Catalyst Series.

In 2018, the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences moved to a new building constructed on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. This state-of-the-art facility provides important infrastructure and research support for trainees. In addition, similar facilities on the South Campus support trainees in Oral Biology and the School of Pharmacy. The Witebsky Center provides administrative support for the training program. The university provides the Witebsky Center with one half time staff persons, which will increase to 1.5 FTE support for the training program, the three annual meetings, the faculty research colloquia, student research meetings and the shared facilities. This is unusual for a Center to be provided with state supported staff, but this is a clear indication of the University’s recognition of the strength and longevity of this research group.

The Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences supports the program by funding the first-year stipend, tuition and fees for students admitted through the PhD Program in Biomedical Sciences. In addition, the university provides Presidential fellowships to supplement stipends for the top students to allow us to attract these students. The university also provides Schomberg fellowships to assist us in recruiting the top URM students. Three presidential fellowships and three Schomberg fellowships are offered in each recruiting cycle. The Jacobs School provides supplementation through funds contributed by departments (the Academic Fund) for the portion of the student stipend and tuition not covered by this T32. Our current PhD stipend is $31, 000, raised from $27,000 in 2020 for all PhD students in the Jacobs School, including those training in Oral Biology. UB’s PhD Excellence Initiative has committed $500,000 each year for the next three years to support growth of the PhD training in the Jacobs School.
 
The majority of students matriculating in eligible programs come through the PhD Program in Biomedical Sciences (PPBS). Beginning in the 2018 recruiting cycle, John Panepinto, PhD, assumed the role of Director of Admissions for the PhD Program in Biomedical Sciences within the Jacobs School of Medicine. At that point, he began implementation of holistic review. Admissions committee members were instructed on strategies to mitigate implicit bias, and rubric based evaluations were applied to all domestic applicants. The GRE was not a factor in admissions decisions, and no metric cutoffs (e.g., GPA) were used to deny interview invitations. The student applications were scored on research experience, letters of recommendation, personal statement, presentations and publications, and GPA trajectory, with each of the five areas being scored from 0-3, for a maximum score of 15. Students scoring at or above the median (usually 11-11.5) were automatically invited to interview, saving discussion for students in the lower 50% of rubric scores. Our 2019 and 2020 interviews were in-person, and then we held zoom interviews for the 2021-2024 cycles. We plan on continuing to use Zoom interviews because the format allows students more flexibility in scheduling, eliminates travel to Buffalo in the middle of winter, and allows us to interview a larger number of students than we could accommodate for in-person interviews. 

During the interview process, non-admissions committee faculty that interviewed students were blind to GPA/transcripts, and only had access to the applicant’s CV and personal statement. Again, an interview evaluation rubric was used to collect data. Admissions decisions were made using a stratified list of all interviewed applicants based on tier rankings of all committee members following discussion of each applicant (similar to NIH study section scoring). As a result of the implementation of holistic review, the number of URM students that received offers of admissions increased over previous years, and the percentage of URM students in the incoming class also increased. Our experience with holistic review is consistent with outcomes identified by scholars engaged in admissions equity research, and our plan to broadly implement holistic review in graduate admissions will likely increase our URM student population. As evidenced in the graphs in Figure 4, the percentage of URM students gaining offers of admissions, as well as those matriculating into the program increased dramatically with the implementation of holistic review.

Because candidates for this proposed training program have a requirement to successfully complete the doctoral qualifying examination process, all eligible students in the laboratories of our mentors will be of high caliber, with a high likelihood of success. Since implementation of holistic review, only one student has left their program, again suggesting that our process is identifying students based on their discernment and experience, rather than on metrics such as GPA and GRE that do not predict success in biomedical research training programs. Between 2017-2021 we enrolled 72 students and have lost 6 of them (3 withdrew and 3 left with master’s), giving us a retention rate of 91.7%. With the implementation of holistic review, only a single student out of the 64 matriculants left the program, and that student is in a graduate program in another university that is more specialized. We are confident that we are assessing students for their discernment and attracting a strong and diverse cohort of students.

All PhD Students are guaranteed funding through graduation while in good academic standing. At the conclusion of the PPBS year, student stipends and tuition become the responsibility of the mentor. The department in which the mentor is appointed is required to sign a backstop agreement that guarantees funding of the stipend, tuition and research costs to permit a student to finish even if the mentor loses funding.
 
Over the last three-year period we have leveraged the launch of UB’s graduate instance of Slate, a higher-ed specific customer relationship management platform (CRM). Slate has allowed us to fully realize new digital marketing functionality and expand outreach to both prospects and applicants to the PPBS.  We launched an email drip campaign in 2019 that emphasized our strengths and provided systematic interactions with our prospect pool - a valuable new tool in our recruitment toolkit.

For the 2020 cycle, we combined that new campaign with primarily in-person recruitment events. Our practice had been to attend regional fairs at key SUNY feeders like Binghamton, Fredonia, and Buffalo State, combined with attendance at national STEM diversity events like ABRCMS and SACNAS. At that time, we participated in one virtual event annually (the Virtual Biomed online fairs hosted by CareerEco). We also were able to host in-person PPBS interviews, which were newly required in 2020 as part of admissions review. The interviews allowed us to evaluate top candidates and also provided an opportunity to showcase our program and facilities, making them a strong component of our recruitment process.

Of course, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic forced us to quickly pivot to fully online recruitment for the 2021 and 2022 cycles. With our school’s Office of Inclusion, we used Slate to co-host online recruitment webinars for WNY partner institutions such as D’Youville, Niagara University, and Canisius College. We hosted PPBS webinars to answer students’ questions about the program and the application process. We continued attending the CareerEco events and also registered for virtual events that had previously been in-person, such as ABRCMS, SACNAS, and Fredonia and Buffalo State’s grad school fair. We found that our internally hosted and publicized virtual events were by and large successful, with good attendance and engagement. Once students registered, they were in our population for follow-up emails in our drip campaign. Virtual versions of past in-person events were generally poorly attended.  It seemed difficult to get noticed in an online setting where we were competing for attention with better-known, elite universities. 

Despite the challenges of the pandemic recruiting landscape, and in line with trends across UB graduate programs, the PPBS saw a significant increase in completed applications once we launched Slate. From 2019 to 2020, total applications increased by more than 20%. Though 2021 applications declined slightly, 2022 yielded our largest number of applications in recent memory (and perhaps ever), led by an increasing international application pool. We hosted half-day Zoom interview sessions in both 2021 and 2022, and fortunately were able to host a small number of accepted students for a 2022 visit to campus. We continue to host zoom interviews with on-site visits for accepted students in the US. Our domestic application pool has decreased a bit, but we are still able to recruit strong classes of students. In the summer of 2023, we started an online microcredential course called Biomedical Sciences through a Social Justice Lens that allowed us to appoint students early enough to receive two paychecks prior to moving. This new course may be responsible for the 50% yield on offers we saw in 2023, compared to an average around 30% yield historically. This microcredential course demonstrates our institution’s commitment to EDI, provided moving support, and allowed the students to build community prior to the start of in-person classes in the fall. We are continuing to provide this course this summer.

We have raised the stipend paid to PPBS students to $31,000 per year, a $4,000 increase from the $27,000 in 2020. All students currently enrolled were raised to $31K to promote equity in pay across PhD students in the Jacobs School. To defray the burden of this increase on mentors currently training PhD students, the difference was covered by the Academic Fund, supplemented by funds from the provost’s office under the PhD Excellence Initiative. Moving forward, we are instituting an annual 3% cost-of-living increase for PhD students in the Jacobs School of Medicine.

We are afforded three top-off awards that allow us to recruit students above the $31K stipend level. The iSeed top-off is a two-year award of $8,000 for URiSTEM students, and we have a single iSeed award. The Schomberg Fellowship is a 4-Year top-off of $8,000, also for URiSTEM students, and we have three of these to use in recruitment. The presidential fellowship is another 4-year, $8,000 top-off award that is GPA-cutoff driven, and again we have three for recruitment. Because we have many URiSTEM students who meet the GPA cut-off for Presidential fellowships, we were able to use two presidential fellowships for URiSTEM recruitments this past cycle.

UB joined the GEM National Consortium, an organization dedicated to increasing the participation of underrepresented groups in master’s and doctoral programs in STEM.  It is a joint membership shared by the Graduate School, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. As a member institution, UB can now host GEM Fellows.  This innovative program provides Fellows with paid internship opportunities at high-profile employers.  The Associate Fellow Program, in which university funding packages can be leveraged to nominate GEM Fellows, provides opportunities now for Jacobs School students in the biomedical sciences. In addition, any URiSTEM student can apply to be a GEM University Fellow, which affords them membership in the GEM community, access to professional development opportunities, and an alumni network to leverage for future career enhancement.

Data tables for NIH grant applications characterize the applicants and enrollees for the PhD Program in Biomedical Sciences. 

For this data, please contact Beth White at bethw@buffalo.edu.