Research-Doctorate Programs in the Biomedical Sciences Selected Findings from the NRC Assessment (2011) / Chapter Skim
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5 Representation of Underrepresented Minorities
5 Representation of Underrepresented Minorities
Pages 27-36
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From page 27... ...
It is true that the programs with more URM students also are the larger departments and the ones with higher research productivity. Hence, while a higher number of NIH training grants go to programs with a larger number of minority Ph.D.
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28 RESEARCH-DOCTORATE PROGRAMS IN THE BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES FIGURE 5-1a Comparison of the Number of Training Grant Awards and the Number of Underrepresented Minorities by Institution. The correlation between training grants and number of URM students is 0.748.
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The above notwithstanding, there are some institutions that stand out as having a high percentage of URM students, regardless of the number of training grants (see Table 5-1)
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As shown in Figure 5-2, institutions with greater than 15 training grant awards had an average of about 25 percent international students in their biomedical sciences programs, compared to about 35 percent at institutions with smaller numbers of grants. Since international students cannot be supported on NIH training grants, this difference is not surprising.
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programs. Toward that end, the biomedical sciences data of the Assessment can identify factors associated with higher URM enrollment among the participating programs.
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enrollments, which corresponds to 1 to 7 URM students. FIGURE 5-3 Histogram Describing the Percentage of URM Ph.D.
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FIGURE 5-4 Histogram Describing the Expected Number of URM PhD Graduates per Year for 982 Bioscience Programs Factors that Predict URM Enrollments To identify key factors that predict the number of URM graduate students in a program, the panel used Poisson log-linear regression to predict the expected rate of enrolled URM students (number URM per total enrolled students) as a function of the following factors: • number of URM faculty; research productivity as measured by the 5th percentile of the NRC "research • productivity" ranking3; and • biomedical science field.
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TABLE 5-2 Predictor, Estimated Relative Rate (RR) and t-Statistic for Null Predictor Relative Rate t-statistic Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology+ 1 -- -- -- Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering 1.17 2.26 Cell and Developmental Biology 1.16 2.44 Genetics and Genomics 1.09 1.09 Immunology and Infectious Diseases 1.32 3.56 Integrated Biological and Biomedical Sciences 0.97 -0.42 Microbiology 1.35 4.15 Neuroscience and Neurobiology 1.25 3.45 Nutrition 1.35 2.91 Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Environmental Health 1.48 6.08 Physiology 1.28 2.71 URM Faculty Fraction 2.96 3.160 Research Productivity 1.0015 1.73 NOTE: RR=1 from log-linear regression of the number of URM PhD students on the indicators of field; biochemistry, biophysics, and structural biology is the reference program with RR assigned to be 1.0, fraction of URM (0-1)
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Research productivity of the program faculty is not a strong predictor of URM Ph.D. student enrollment, once the number of PhD students is taken into account.
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. A standard deviation of 0.5 for a Gaussian distribution means that roughly 1 of 3 universities would have relative rates below 0.6 or above 1.6, a demonstration of important variation among institutions in their ability to attract URM PhD students, even after controlling for variation among them in their fractions of URM faculty, research productivity, and field.
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