Kim-Phuong L. Vu

Formal undergraduate research training programs are typically two years in length to support student development over time. However, some evidence suggests that many benefits of research participation can be achieved in a shorter duration, raising the question of whether shorter models can be as effective. This prospective study compared outcomes for two concurrent cohort-based research training models: a two-year Scholars Program and an accelerated one-year Fellows Program. The Fellows Program was designed for advanced students who joined the training program later than their peers for a variety of reasons. Both programs provided students with financial support, faculty-mentored research, a Learning Community, and other resources for professional development. The longer duration allowed Scholars to report significantly higher levels of research skills and produce more publications and professional presentations than Fellows by the end of their respective training programs. In contrast, the programs did not differ on graduation GPA, number of awards, or graduate school enrollment. Fellows also did not significantly differ from Scholars on psychosocial measures, including science/researcher identity, belongingness, cultural compatibility, family support, or time management. Findings suggest that a high-intensity, one-year model can deliver many broad academic and social benefits associated with the two-year model, while a longer two-year model provides students with more time and additional research opportunities to be more productive. We conclude that both types of programs should be available to best meet students’ needs and to make the most effective use of program resources.

In the original publication (Ramos & Vu, 2024), there was a mistake in Table 1 as published: The rightmost column was mistakenly included and contained incorrect values

This paper presents an analysis of survey data to examine the association between participating in one of the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) funded Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity Initiative (BUILD) program and students’ intent to pursue a career in science. Data were collected from students at California State University Long Beach (CSULB) to examine the effectiveness of the BUILD Scholars program. Both BUILD Scholars and non-BUILD students were surveyed. Propensity score matching was used to generate the non-BUILD comparison group. Multinomial logistic regression results revealed that students participating in the BUILD intervention were associated with significantly higher intent to pursue a career in science. Results also showed the importance of variables such as science identity and research participation when assessing interest in science careers. These findings have implications for STEM program evaluation and practice in higher education.

This book is the second edition of one published in 2008 by Wickens and McCarley. The goal, then and now, is for the book to reunite basic research on

This study examined how science identity and positive educational outcomes relate to student trainees’ decision to pursue a research career in health-related sciences, within the context of a two-year research training program that prepares diverse undergraduate students for a research career. In analyses using the evaluation data, science identity and one of the positive educational outcomes significantly predicted trainees’ decision to pursue a research career in biomedical and behavioral sciences. In general, students with stronger science identity and interest in pursuing research in academia exhibited a firmer decision to pursue a research career in sciences. In a separate analysis that examined the associations between the trainees’ decision to pursue a health-related research career and their underrepresented minority identities, gender, and disciplinary track, results revealed that: (1) the interaction between trainees’ disciplinary track (i.e., biomedical vs. behavioral sciences) and their underrepresented minority status was associated with their decision to pursue a research career, but (2) the gender x disciplinary track interaction was not. Emphasizing the need for supporting diverse undergraduate trainees to solidify their science identity and preparing them for a research career in academia, we discuss implications of our findings for research training programs with similar aims.

This study examined the role of science identity in a two-year upper-division research training program that prepares diverse undergraduate students for a research career. Using the annual year-end student evaluation data, we examined whether science identity is a predictor or an outcome of learning that enhances career preparation in biomedical research. Results showed that science identity is a predictor of learning in our trainees. In general, students with stronger science identity at the end of Year 2 reported having acquired more research skills and experiences through the program. This finding demonstrates that science identity makes learning research skills meaningful and purposeful. Preliminary analyses also showed that the levels of science identity did not differ between Years 1 and 2. In fact, science identity approached the maximum possible scores in both years. These findings imply that the training program could have succeeded in bolstering participants’ science identity early by the end of the first year. Our findings do not rule out the possibility that science identity is both a predictor and an outcome of learning, depending on the specific contexts of learning as well as learners’ specific developmental phases. Further studies are needed to systematically test these and other possibilities.

Engaging undergraduates in research is a high impact practice shown to increase underrepresented students’ persistence in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields and entry into research careers. The California State University Long Beach (CSULB) BUilding Infrastructure Leading to Diversity (BUILD) Scholars Program is a 2-year, upper-division research training program. Although similar research training programs exist, most admit relatively few students a year, primarily from the natural sciences. The BUILD award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) allowed us to broaden research training to a wider range of health-related disciplines across four different colleges to have more even representation across the behavioral and biomedical science disciplines. Our Scholars Program builds upon best practices of programmatic mentoring, assets-based and cohort-based training, financial and educational support, and intensive research training by faculty in the students’ disciplines. In this paper, we present the outcomes and evaluation of our training program with data from the first phase of the BUILD award (2015-2019). Findings demonstrate that our Scholars Program was effective at recruiting and retaining underrepresented students from a broad range of disciplines. Moreover, our trainees demonstrated a high level of research engagement through off-campus summer research experiences, conference presentations, and publications. The intensive training in the Scholars Program also yielded high graduate school acceptance rates for our trainees. Most importantly, our findings show that it is possible to broaden an intensive undergraduate research training program that is similarly effective for trainees across behavioral and biomedical disciplines, underrepresented minority status, and gender. While we highlight several elements of our training program, we emphasize these components likely work together interactively, and institutions wanting to establish a similar training program need to ensure sufficient resources for its successful implementation.