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Suggested Citation:"STATEMENT BY JOANNE M. POHL, Ph.D., R.N.." 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 78
Suggested Citation:"STATEMENT BY JOANNE M. POHL, Ph.D., R.N.." 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 79

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APPENDIX D 78 service fellowship programs. Even the Department of Education fellowships were increased last year to match NSF fellowship stipends currently at $14,000 annually. The Minority Access to Research Careers (MARC) Program has proven to be highly effective in drawing talented minority students into careers in biomedical research. The program should be strongly supported and perhaps increased in size. According to the NIH, in 1990, over 5,000 doctorates were awarded in the life sciences in the U.S., but only 2.3 percent went to Hispanics, 1.4 percent to African Americans, and 0.2 percent to Native Americans. Many universities have used the MARC program to identify promising undergraduates and provide them with summer research internships and related activities to interest them in and prepare them for graduate study. The quality of the research program and the extent of faculty mentoring are major determinants in the success of institutional programs, and these attributes should continue to play a determining role in awarding grants in any expanded program. In addition to expanding the MARC program, the committee should also consider opportunities to expand and increase the flexibility of incentives for principal investigators to hire minority graduate and undergraduate students. While women now receive about one-third of the Ph.D.s granted, they still remain underrepresented in science and engineering. Mr. Chairman, I would encourage this Committee to consult with the Office of Research on Women’s Health at the NIH to explore ways in which the NRSA program might encourage more women to consider a career in biomedical research. Finally, one of the features of the NRSA training grant that might be strengthened to assure the maintenance of high quality research environments is the need for institutional flexibility in allocating the resources that accompany each grant. In addition to providing critical support for students, training grants should continue to provide significant resources for strengthening and sustaining the training programs themselves. The Committee may wish to consider permitting a flexible rather than a fixed proportion of training grants to be used for program support. However, care must be taken to assure that any increased proportion of training grants used for program support be fully justified on the basis of the overall benefit to training capacity of the program, and clearly differentiated from objectives better supported through research funding. To increase NRSA stipends to a competitive level while maintaining the same number of trainees in the program will require a substantial increase in program funding. I fully understand how difficult this will be, given the constraints on the NIH budget. I suggest, therefore, that you phase in the necessary increases over perhaps a five-year period. STATEMENT BY JOANNE M. POHL, Ph.D., R.N. There are three areas I want to address to assure a continuing supply of skilled investigators in the biomedical and behavioral sciences: 1) the need for interdisciplinary and team research including multi- university relationships; 2) increased attention to the educational needs of women and minorities; and 3) strengthening financial support and allowing more flexibility regarding employment stipulations. First I will address the need for interdisciplinary and team research and cross university relationships. My recommendations here are three fold: 1) more emphasis on cosponsors and interdisciplinary sponsors; 2) financial support for consultants from smaller or lesser known universities; and 3) some sort of “match” system with faculty across disciplines and universities. The need to mentor younger and newer scientists is clearly critical and, as funding becomes increasingly competitive, senior researchers find that they have less and less time to devote to mentoring. Senior researchers and faculty need both time and rewards for mentoring younger researchers. One alternative may be to share the mentoring when that is possible. For example, one of the strengths of my NRSA was that I had not only two cosponsors from The University of Michigan--each from a different discipline and with complementary skills, but also I was able to utilize the mentorship of a research team at another university, Michigan State University, because of my employment there as a research associate. My mentoring occurred across disciplines and across universities. This cooperation is unusual I am told; yet, this broad perspective was mutually beneficial at every level. The responsibility for mentoring was shared, and each one of us had the benefit of interaction with other experts in my particular field of research. Cosponsors need to be the rule rather than the exception. The traditional model of a solo researcher

APPENDIX D 79 providing the mentoring for selected students may have its place in certain instances. But in order to assure the maintenance of high quality research training environments especially in the behavioral sciences, I would like to see more support for interdisciplinary and team efforts and even multi-university cooperation. The problems we are researching today in behavioral science often demand an interdisciplinary approach. Collaboration needs to be modeled for students. The concept that research in a particular area is the work of one or two persons fosters isolationism and competitiveness which is no longer appropriate to scientific development; it is not conducive to learning nor to the multiple roles many of us assume in academia. Qualified scientists may be in smaller or lesser known universities, or have limited access to advanced graduate students and postdoctoral students. It is possible that these scientists could play an important role in mentoring young researchers, and fees for their consultation might be incorporated into NRSA funding, similarly but perhaps on a smaller scale, to that done with academic awards and RO1s. Such contacts early in someone’s research career can be critical as one begins to develop those important broad linkages. This relationship could be highly advantageous to a smaller or less prominent university as it attempts to respond to the research needs of this country. In addition, some sort of “match” system may be advisable in areas of high need research; a match with faculty in another university who might provide significant input into the student’s research program might be useful. The needs of women and minorities have been identified as an area of special concern by this committee, and this is the second area I want to address. There are gender differences in the timing of graduate education based on long standing social traditions. Many women enter the graduate track later in life due to family care responsibilities, second careers, and often develop first careers later in life than men. Many of these women are single parents. The NRSA needs to reconsider its limited support structure if increased participation by women and minorities is a goal. More options are needed. For example, incentives for completing early may be appropriate for some, while others need support for additional years with funding spread out over that time and with the student allowed more employment hours than is presently the case. I will make more specific comments on the funding issues in the third and final section of this report. To assure a continuing supply of skilled investigators in the biomedical and behavioral sciences I believe we need to expose promising undergraduate students, especially women and minorities, to research early in their educational experience through creative course work and independent study. • Programs such as the Summer Research Opportunities Program at The University of Michigan which allows young women and minorities to work with university researchers, for pay, during the summer, may be critical for attracting young researchers. • Recently women’s groups have suggested that daughters spend a day at work with their mothers. That concept may need to be taken seriously on a broader scale. To recruit women into research we need to suggest that high school students and college undergraduates spend not a day but a term with a woman or minority researcher. • Incentives to universities and faculty who encourage and sponsor students in these sorts of programs are needed. Linkages may need to be developed across universities as already suggested. We might invest more doing this, but the overall product would be worth it. The third and final area I want to address is that of funding. Although I am grateful for the funding that accompanied my NRSA, I and many of the other women doctoral students at The University of Michigan found the stipend and rule regarding employment extremely limited. Cost of living in Ann Arbor for one is estimated to be $1100 per month by the university. Many of us are parents, some single parents, and some of our children are in college so education costs are often not just our own. The existing structure of a $700 monthly stipend and employment limitations to 25 percent time is simply not sufficient. If the stipend cannot be increased, then I would strongly urge that employment limits be lifted and the NRSA annual progress report be the basis for evaluating productivity and continued financial support. The assumption seems to be that work is not educational and may interfere with educational productivity. In my case my work was part of my mentoring experience and was critical to my progress.

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