Transcript
I think we can get started. I'll just give it one minute. I'll see people coming in. Then we should start.
Hi, my name is Angela Holmes and I am going to welcome you to the Nighty Diversity Supplement Informational Webinar. The webinar will run from 1:00 P.M. to 3:00 P.M. Eastern Standard. Please ask you to answer your questions in the Q&A at any time during the meeting. The agenda for today's event can be found in the meeting chat. The first hour of this meeting is being recorded, the second hour is being transcribed. A copy of the slides, the recording and this transcript will be available in about 10 business days at the website provided in the chat. Now I'm going to turn it over to Doctor Wilson Compton he is the deputy director of NIDA, and he will give our opening remarks. Doctor Compton.
Well, thank you very much, Angela. I'm so glad to be here today to welcome everyone on behalf of the National Institute on Drug Abuse to our Diversity Supplement Informational Webinar. This is the first time we've done this background webinar for a program that we've had for some 30 years at NIDA. We've had the pleasure of making available supplements to existing grants to provide research opportunities, training and mentorship to enhance the diversity of biomedical research. Now, I'm very proud of our work in recent years, as we have expanded this program. We have emphasized the importance of not just the general grant support, but also mentoring and training within this program. After all, the purpose of these diversity supplements is not simply to add to the grant to which they're attached, but to help launch the careers of promising scientists. Who can make their own independent contributions, either on their own or with the large teams with which they work.
This is such an exciting and an important enterprise as we look to enhance our scientific efforts by making sure that voices and perspectives from many different domains are included in the NIDA supported scientific enterprise. That's a really broad view of why we think this is so important. But I want to take a moment to thank the team for organizing this webinar, particularly Woody Lin and Beth Bebeki, from our division of Neuroscience and behavior, who've been so active in working with our research training group overall and with the diversity supplement committees within NIDA to assure that we provide the support to trainees who are coming up through this program. I want to thank Angela Holmes, who you've already met, who leads this program for NIDA, and does a fantastic job in helping to make sure that we provide the support to all of our trainees through this diversity supplement program. Of course, it's not just Angela, Woody and Beth, but there's a large team behind them who include our Office of Research Training Diversity and Disparities group, Aria Crump, in particular, I want to highlight, and the rest of our team in ORTDD, as we are known.
Our NIDA program officials that work with each and every one of our diversity supplement awardees to help them launch their careers, both within the grant to which their supplement is attached, as well as longer term opportunities across our grant portfolio. I want to thank our guest panelists and certainly thank our contractor Rose Lean Associates who have done such an important job in helping us develop this webinar. Our fiscal year just ended. You may not know this, but we celebrate the new year on October 1, because the federal government ends its fiscal year at the end of September. I'm able to report that during this past year, which went from October of 23 through September thirty of 2024, we received 81 new NIDA applications, and we're able to fundforty one of them. We're so excited that our funded applications span across our general portfolio, but they also include grants within the NIH brain neuroscience program, the helping and addiction long term or heal opioid use disorder program, and our small business innovative research program, SBIR STTR. That was a new one for me. I think this is the first time, at least in my memory that we've supported a diversity supplement within our business grants. But it opened my eyes up, and I hope many of you all up to the possibility of using grants from across our portfolio. To help provide training, nurturing, and support to emerging scientists. We're also very pleased that we have one grant that was attached to our tobacco regulatory science program that is supported by FDA Center for tobacco products.
What I'm highlighting for you, is that our program spans the range of grants that NIDA has, and we look forward to you helping us make sure that the applicants in FY 25 that started October 1 and beyond, are able to submit the strongest application so that we could make sure that these are used as a launching point for scientific careers. With that, I'll turn it back to Angela to introduce our next speakers, and I wish everyone all the best for this introductory webinar. I look forward to seeing what questions and ideas you have in the Q&A. Frankly, if you have additional questions that are outside this webinar, don't hesitate to send me an e mail at W compton@nida.nih.Go I always look forward to hearing from you and as both current awardees and potential applicants for these important supplements. Angela, back to you.
Thanks, Wilson. Thank you for those wonderful opening remarks. Before we get started, we want to do a little poll. If we could put the slide deck up for the poll. This will take just like 15 seconds. We just want to get a sense of who's on the call today. Do please quickly vote. I see we have potential diversity supplement PIs, 47%, and some potential diversity supplement scholars, 37%. Almost like half.
Next slide. I'm going to give an overview of the NIDA diversity supplement program goals, eligibility, review and funding for the program. We'll start with the background for the NIDA diversity supplement program. A growing body of research shows that teams composed of people from a variety of backgrounds and experiences produce better and more innovative products and ideas than homogeneous teams. Fostering diversity in the scientific research workforce is a key component of the NIH strategy, to foster innovation and discovery, improve the quality of the research and enhance global competitiveness. One way NIH and NIDA is accomplishing this is via NIDA Diversity supplement program, Administrative supplements are provided to active NIDA research grants to enhance the diversity of addiction research workforce by encouraging post-backs, master's degree candidates and holders, pre-doctoral students, post-doctoral researchers, and early stage investigators from diverse backgrounds to pursue careers in biomedical and behavioral research. Nine of diversity supplements provide typically two to three years of funding for scholars to gain the research experience, preliminary data, and other needed training to apply for independent grant funding, and also prepare for the next career stage. In case of post facts and master's degree candidates and degree holders, they will require any training, etc needed to be more competitive for graduate school. Also, I would like to mention that the candidate and the PI, they work on the application together, but it is the PI who actually submits the application on behalf of the candidate. Also, are invited to this workshop and so we just had the workshop last month. Over 20 NIH institute centers and organizations collaborate to put together this workshop which took place on September 25th. Just to give you a very brief description of it, the two day workshop provided scholars the opportunity to share their research and get feedback during poster sessions, gain knowledge about NIH funding and training opportunities specific for their career stages and beyond, receive information about the NIH grant and review process. Learn how to choose a mentor, net worth NIH staff, and other scholars, as well as hear from past scholars about their journey to becoming an independent investigator and learn about other scientific career paths. There are also additional travel war opportunities such as the NIDA travel War program. There will be a link dropping in the chat for that. Moreover, I would like to emphasize that the support does not end after one completes the supplement. We provide peer to peer support throughout your career trajectory, so feel free to reach out even after your supplement has ended.
Next slide. What awards can be parent awards for diversity supplements? So most but not all NIDA parent grants are eligible for the diversity supplement. You want to take a look at Part 1 of the notice of the funding opportunity to look for your activity code. I want to point out that training and career development awards are not eligible. Also, the parent grant must be active and have sufficient time remaining in the initial project period for the proposed supplement period. Then for potential scholars, NIH Reporter is a very, very useful resource to identify nine and funded investigators conducting research relevant to your interests.
Next slide. A major requirement for the diversity supplement application is a signed candidate eligibility statement from an institutional official, which must clearly describe the candidate citizenship. The candidate must be a US citizen, non-citizen national or permanent resident. The statement must also include a description of how the appointment of this specific candidate would further the goals of the diversity supplement opportunity and must be consistent with NIH's interest in diversity.
Next slide, so this slide is just showing examples of populations eligible for diversity supplements, it's not all inclusive. We have populations that are underrepresented in the biomedical workforce, individuals with disabilities, individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds, and women from the above categories. However, it is recognized that under-representation can vary from setting to setting. Individuals from racial or ethnic groups that can be demonstrated convincingly to be under-represented by the Grantee Institution are also welcome to apply for this program.
Next slide, I'm sorry. Can you go back? That was me. Here is some general NIDA program eligibility notes that you want to take into account to see if this mechanism is right for the potential candidate. If you are already on a NIH funded T32 at your current institution, the PI can apply for a supplement for you, but you cannot start the supplement until your appointment has ended. Also, if you are already on a NIDA supported grant such as NRA, you can't end that support to start a supplement. You can't be transferred to the supplement. Then we have a limitation on how long you can be supported by the parent grant. You can be on a parent grant up to six months prior to submission of the application to NIDA. We allow PI to support two NIDA diversity supplement scholars on a parent grant, but they must be at different career stages unless they both are pre-docs.
Next slide. This is a table showing the general NIDA's level of support for diversity supplement recipients. The supplements carry salary as well as French benefits. French benefits must be itemized in the budget, and the research and travel support monies can be used for materials for the diversity supplement project, and also like travel to scientific conferences. What these monies will be utilized for should be clearly described within the budget justification. Then for pre-doctoral students, the diversity supplement can cover tuition costs up to the NRSA levels. For pre-docs at the Parent University and tuition remission is not available for other career stages. Before we move on, it is important to note that the salary and friends for the PI and Mittering team are not allowable. The support is really for the diversity supplement scholars and also PI should work with their grants office on the budget section. If you have any questions while you're putting together the budget, please reach out to me.
Next slide. This is a slide showing what is required in the application for it to be complete. If your application is missing any one of these items, it will not be reviewed. Please pay attention to this checklist as you prepare the application and look at it again before you submit it to NIH. For your convenience, this checklist is included on the NIDA Diversity Supplements, how to apply page, which is linked into this slide. Just quickly, you want to make sure you have a candidate eligibility statement. A research plan, which includes the Diversity supplement research project for the candidate. A career development plan, which is pretty much tailored to that specific candidate, a mentorship plan, biosketch the candidate. Biosketches for each of the mentors and some senior and key personnels for the supplement, and then also the project performance site form, as well as budget forms. Then we also want to note that the research, career development, and mentorship plans is limited to a total of six pages. Really emphasizing this because this is a change in our program. It used to be 12 pages.
Next slide. We have five submission deadlines for the general NIDA diversity supplement program, but you can submit an application at any time. We will review it during the next review meeting if it comes in after the deadline. However, please keep in mind that the final deadline for submission of applications for the general NIDA program is April 15. Any applications received after this date will be considered for funding during the next fiscal year, which is October 1. Then also submission deadlines, they vary across the different programs specific diversity supplements, so it's best to reach out to the POs to verify submission deadlines. Let's talk about the review process. Diversity supplements are not reviewed in the study section. They are reviewed administratively. It's basically an internal review. Recommendations are made by the Parent Grant Award program official. There's a review committee comprised of NIDA program staff, and then final decisions are made by the NIDA director. You'll also receive feedback from the review in a summary statement.
Next slide. These are the important review criteria for diversity supplements, which you will find in Part 2, Section 5 of the Notice of Funding Opportunity announcement. I would advise you to carefully read over these review criteria and use them as a guide as you prepare the application. I wouldn't say that one is more important than the other. They are all important. The reviewers will be looking at everything that is listed here.
Next slide. When you're thinking about getting ready to apply for a diversity supplement, these are some of the questions that you should ask. Is the candidate eligible looking to advance in science? Are the PI and others involved in training committed to voting, time and providing strong mentorship? Also, the amount of time remaining on the Parent Award it's important depending on the career level of the candidates. Just for example, you need to have at least one year remaining for the post-back and the master's level, two years remaining for the pre-doc level, and 18 months remaining for the post-sock and early-stage investigator level. Then you also want to make sure that the research project is within scope of the parent grant, and there should be some significant contribution to it. Also think about, has the candidate had any adequate training mentorship to successfully progress in their career without a diversity supplement. Any questions about that, you can just reach out to me before submitting.
Next slide. Now I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Aria Crump and she's going to go into detail about which diversity supplement program that you should apply for, because I only touched on it a little bit. Aria. Yes. Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for joining today, and I see that the questions are rolling into the Q&A. Thank you and do keep them coming. I'm going to talk very briefly about the different options for diversity supplement application.
Next slide, please. It's important to know that if you are in NIDA grantee, you are eligible to apply through the NIDA General Diversity Supplement Program. However, you may also be eligible to apply through a distinctive program, such as the brain heal or SBIR/STTR program, if that is the source of funding for your parent award. These are the four different types. You've already heard Dr. Contin mention these earlier.
The key here is that you have to make sure you're following the guidance for that particular program, and I can go to the next slide, please. But first, let me talk a little bit about them. These are programs and initiatives that have prioritized the importance of diversity in the workforce, and therefore, they have made it a goal to use their leverage to support the diversity supplement program. The brain initiative is, as you may be aware, focused on advancing neuroscience findings related to the human brain. The heal initiative is related to the opioid crisis, and if you have a grant that's funded through one of these initiatives, it's imperative that if you want to have your diversity supplement linked to the initiative that you submit your application with the proper indicator in the agency rooter routing identifier field, which is box 4B on your SF424 form. That's a lot of words. The key here is that when you're submitting for diversity supplement, it's like submitting an administrative supplement application. You have to go through the full electronic submission process, and there's a box that you have to use to indicate if you're applying for brain or heal. What you put in that box is the NOSI or notice of special interest number. Next on the slide. Similarly, the SBIR/STTR programs, which are focused on supporting small businesses and innovative research, there is an opportunity. This is a separate program announcement. You actually can apply directly to PA-24-255, rather than the standard 23189 announcement. If you do have an interest in applying through the small business program, we strongly recommend that you use this announcement as it is specific for those types of candidates. Next page. Regardless of what program you use, the general one or one of the specialty programs, you have to make sure that you attend carefully to the guidance for these programs. There may be different, for example, receipt dates, career level supported, etc.
You can go to the next slide. This particular chart here shows that for each of these programs, general heal brain or SBIR/STTR. Naturally, there are different science and training expectations under those programs. But there are slightly different dates, and there are differences in the level of the supported scholars. Notice that the general NIDA program does not support high school students or undergraduate students, but the heal and the brain do. There also can be differences in scholar support prior to receiving the award.
With that in mind, next slide. The key here is not to memorize the table, but to carefully review all the guidance that's associated with the specific announcement and consult with program of staff before applying.
We can go to the next slide. With that, I know there are a number of questions that have rolled in. We're going to take a few of those questions before we transition to the next segment of this presentation. I'm going to start off if it's okay, Angela and just say, there are a couple of things that folks really wanted us to repeat. One is that these slides will be made available on the website that has been dropped in the chat in about 10 days. It's something we mentioned at the very beginning. You will have access to these slides. Another thing I just wanted to point out is it's really important to realize these are opportunities for folks who really need a step up toward their journey into science. They're really not designed for folks who have already had a K, for example, that's not typical. On that,
I'm going to change it switch over to Angela and get her to respond further to that question specifically about what about if someone's already had a K award. Like Aria said, I think it would depend on what you need if you already had a K board. If the person is looking to transition to a another area of science, then the diversity supplement will probably benefit them because they would require certain training and mentorship to make that transition to this new area. Another question that has come up is and I know that some folks are asking about citizenship. Please do reach out to Angela if you have specific questions. The guidance indicates that you really do need to be a US citizen or a permanent resident. I believe it's at the time that the award comes through. Is that correct, Angela?
I'll have to double-check the NOSI but I think that's correct. A couple of other questions. One is, eligibility seems a little vague. How do I know if I'm really eligible? The main thing here is it is vague intentionally because there are different ways that folks can contribute to diversity. The statement of interest in diversity gives you specific examples, and it really is up to the individual to work with their department because your justification comes in from your sponsored program office. You have to work with them on a statement that justifies the way that your work is going to support diversity in the scientific workforce. Angela, is that?
The list of populations that was on the slide, those are not the all that's only eligible. Those are just examples. We are looking for individuals from diverse backgrounds, and like Aria said, is the responsibility of the institutional officials preparing that letter to clearly explain how the candidate is eligible for this program. Another person asked about the number of pages for the combination of the research, mentorship, plan, etc. That is a six-page limit. However, keep in mind that there's a lot of other components of the application, the candidate statement, the biosketches, that also provide information to the committee that reviews these applications. The reason that it was changed 12-6, I'll just mention is because the limit depends on the parent grant. If you had submitted under R 21, because there's a six-page limit to the research strategy, you would only have six pages. This way, everybody gets the same number of pages to present that information. I'm going to see if there's one more question before we turn it over to the next session. Anything pressing for you, Angela? I think we're actually good. We're going to have a session later on today where we talk about what makes an application strong. At this time, I don't want to delay any further. We have a fabulous panel who's going to talk to you about their personal experiences with the Diversity Supplement program. I'd like to hand the meeting over to Dr. Woody Lin, who's going to introduce this panel. No, I'm muted.
Thank you, Aria. Good afternoon all. Welcome to this session on Diversity Supplement Testimonials. Let me say thanks to my panel members for sparing time and contributing to this webinar. The audience will find that NIDA assembles a very unique panel for your interest. You speakers' career trajectory spans from senior posts docs, who has also secured effect positions like Dr. Cuarenta and to early independent investigator and assistant professor, like Dr Emery and the wives. Then to Dr. Hoeppner, who is associate professor. They are either a successful current PI of NIDA Diversity Supplement Award who serves Samantha's rules were former NIDA diversity supplement scholars themselves or both. I encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity and resource by asking specific questions this afternoon. With that, let me turn the microphone to our.
Should I introduce myself? Yeah, please. Hi, everyone, and thank you all for actually attending the seminar and thank you to the organizers. My name is Barbara Juarez. I'm an assistant professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. I was actually a former diversity supplement awardee when I was a post doctoral fellow, and I currently have a graduate predoctoral student who is funded on a diversity supplement now. I'll let the others introduce themselves. Well, maybe Dr. Hoeppner?
Hi, I'm Bettina Hoeppner. I'm an associate professor at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. I have a great privilege to have just mentored a diversity fellow and now just starting another one who just got funded recently. They're at both spectrums. My first fellow was a postback and my current one is an early stage investigator. I feel they'll get a chance to talk about how wonderful these experiences have been all around for the team as well as the scholars. Great to be here. Thank you. Dr Emery?
Great to be with you. Noah Emery. I'm an assistant professor at Colorado State University, and like others, I currently have a fellow who is a graduate student working with me, and then I was also a fellow myself as an early stage investigator. Thank you. Amelia?
Hi, my name is Amelia Cuarenta. Thank you so much for having me here today. I am a post doctoral research fellow at Georgia State University in the Neuroscience Institute. Although soon I will be transitioning to my own lab, so I'll be an assistant professor at the University of Michigan starting next summer. I do not have a diversity supplement trainee yet, but I hope to use this program in the future, but I did have a diversity supplement when I started my post doctoral career here.
Wonderful. Thank you, my panel members. Now, we have additional times rather than turn to Q&As for this session, I thought maybe it's a good opportunity for everyone share a little more about your career trajectory. In light of the diversity supplements that you have received or you served as a mentors for your trainees. Barb, I thought you have a very unique situation, maybe. I can go first. I've been very fortunate to have mentors to tell me about these opportunities, and increasingly it's becoming much more aware, and these symposiums and seminars are super helpful to getting the word out about these initiatives. During my post doc, I was on a training grant, and then during that transition, my PI suggested that we apply for the diversity supplement since I had qualified. What was really unique in that from the training grant that I was on was that I was able to form a mentoring committee as a post doc. Sometimes post docs are not forgotten, but not every institution has specific mentoring committees for post docs. That was really beneficial for me, very midway through my post doc in getting that diversity supplement. Then from there, I applied for the Mosaic K99, which I was awarded that. Those mentoring members actually were retained for that part of the K99 as well. Then as I transitioned and started my r00, I had a predoctoral student enter my lab pretty early on and had the opportunity to apply with her for this diversity supplement. Through a lot of help, thanks to Angela and Woody, it was successfully funded just last school semester. Great. Amelia, do you have anything to tell us or tell the audience?
Yeah. Mine was a little bit different. I actually started with the NIO Diversity supplement before applying for anything else. It was actually my first experience writing any type of grants. I thought it was a really good experience to see what an RO1 looked like, and then how the things that I wanted to look at were distinct, but still fit within the scope of the RO1. I thought it was a really good training opportunity for me very early on in my career. I believe it was my second month as a post doctoral associate, and that's when we applied for the Diversity supplement. I really think that that experience helped prepare me for other grant opportunities. I'm currently a Mosaic NDA K 99 fellow. But I do think that going forward, in the past, doing this diversity supplement really helped get my foot in the door, not only with understanding some of these mechanisms, but also getting to know the grants office at my institution, and then also the members at NDA that have been so helpful with my awards. Thank you. So interesting. Bettina, for this diversity supplement, many times, the program require the engagement of the trainees. I just wonder why are you submitting your application? Any comments or any tips that you would like to share with the audience.
This is a common question [inaudible 00:42:26]. Yes, for both my mentees, they have very different reasons for applying for them. Theodora was an undergraduate intern in my lab. While she was going for her senior year, she knew that she wanted to do research. She was passionate about it, but she didn't know exactly yet how she would fit in, and she needed to explore more what it meant to travel down different paths. That's why we applied for that fellowship to give her time to really immerge herself in different experiences and willing to up more clinical internship in the SUD clinic, where she could do some shadowing. We let her do some secondary day analysis, where she had to do some heavy lifting in terms of finding out what data exists and how you navigate that space. We set up with different mentors to experience them and ask about what was their career paths like, what kind of decisions led them to the place that they're currently at. All of these experiences then helped her to understand where she wanted to go. In her first year, she applied for clinical psychology and then realized that's actually not what she wanted to do, it's just the path that she knew because it was the most well known one. Then she realized that the field of Health Services research exists, and that's where she actually applied, and now she's in the Boston University Doctoral Program for Health Services research, and she loves it. That was great.
My other candidate, who just got funded, is very unusual. She's actually the director of a recovery community center. She doesn't work on an academic institution. But she did get her PhD, and she loves doing research. But her job is such that she rarely gets a chance to do that. We onboard her to this partner that we have going on, which is a community engaged research project with community partners. She gets to see how we're doing the various things in our project and then use whatever skills and pieces she likes from that to do her own research, and, of course, utilize our whole network and conducting her own research. It's again, another wonderful opportunity for us to learn from each other as we are doing it together. That's why I mentor. You learn so much more in these mentoring relationships, and it opens new paths in a diversity of thoughts. Thank you so much I saw interest in several stories.
Also for our panel members, you can share some examples, not necessarily just from your lab, from your colleagues, from your peers in the same department or beyond the department. I think the real world stories will be a very impressive and very imparting. Now, Noah, you may have some stories or you heard or you observed to share with our audience. Sure.
Perhaps I'll tell mine as well, just to give both sides of the story. When I joined the faculty or Colorado State, I discovered that they have the longest standing epidemiological study of indigenous youth. It's been continuously funded by NDA since the early 70s. As an indigenous scholar myself, that was really personally meaningful to me, and I really wanted to get involved, but those budgets with nationally representative studies and things like this are pretty tight. I was really grateful to be able to write a supplement to join the team fully. I'm fully integrated into the team itself, which gives me, a bunch of experiences that were really critical to my development. But also early career investigators at the faculty stage, I think often don't have like, built in in the institution level mentorship that this provided me on top of my existing mentorship team that came from my previous institution, so I moved here from Brown, and I had an existing team, but now I'm on the other side of the country and moving into a totally new space. I'm more of an intervention researcher. I'm a clinical psychologist, and most of my work is with intentional longitudinal designs. To move to an epidemiological format, just opened up a whole new area of research for me. Gave me really important protected time for me outside of teaching classes, protecting me from that, to really focus on building my independent career, like, program of research, which was absolutely critical to my development. Multiple grants had been funded as a function of that protected time and the knowledge that I gained as a function of the training with the new mentorship and my old mentorship team.
I also have a scholar her name is Sarah May, who's a fantastic graduate student. I wrote a couple of 20 ones that got funded during my fellowship that we were able to have her join onto that are some are meaningfully different in areas that I've been involved in before, and she brought new ideas to these existing projects, which were absolutely critical in opening whole new areas for us, but also to give her protected time from assistantship. We have a clinical program. We do clinical work, they have their own classes. They also have these assistant-ships, which take up lots of time. We'll be able to step away from those things and totally engaged with research was absolutely critical. Also, I find, both for me and for Sarah that mentorship is best got [inaudible 00:47:51]. Not everybody is great at everything, but most people who have made it to this stage or good at something and be able to purposely craft a mentorship team that's going to speak directly to your career goals, similar to maybe like an F or a K might do in these spaces was absolutely critical. Really one of the big things that both for me and for Sarah, I think were really helpful was the funding that we were able to do to fund stats training. Statistics, training specifically, protected time, protected funds to layer on top of what you would normally get in faculty I don't have any stats training in my institution. Like, I'm learning that on the fly in the dark in the middle of the night. But I've been able to pay to go to these trainings is absolutely critical to expand my knowledge base, which allows me to be more competitive for grants in the future, but also just really to understand the work we're doing for the populations that we really care about. In my institution, there's also other people who have gotten diversity supplements along the way and be able to integrate into large national studies like ours.
We have a fellow named Tom, who is able to join the pride study that's happening out of San Francisco for sexual and gender diverse communities and be able to plug in with these really national level studies going on to make sure that the right people in the right rooms to make sure the work is done the right way, but also have access to data that might not be available at your institution and create a really nice fabric of mentorship. It's been absolutely amazing. I can't recommend it high enough. Now, the next question I have for all is partially has been answered by the stories you tell us. But anyway, in what ways have you seen the scholars grow or develop through the diversity supplement programs? Maybe you can share some examples in terms of, when they receive the support and how the support can help them go through the stages if that's operable in your case. Yes, I can go first.
My scholar, Crystal, she got her supplement when she was just a first year. Here at University of Maryland, students actually don't form their thesis committee until their third year. The part of the supplement allowed her to create a mentoring committee really early on, and the goal is to have them serve as her thesis committee. She's already met with them and discussed her project. She interacts with them a lot more and very early on in her training, which especially as an early mentor, like, I'm a new PI. That also helps me understand best mentoring practices and stuff. I've seen that in her development be fueled stronger with that supplement as well. Any other comments from our panel member on this particular question? I will say that for Theodora, it was really important to be have the opportunity to explore. She had to support herself through school, she had to work. When you're spending your time doing that those jobs, you don't have a chance as much to explore different career paths. During her fellowship, she met a whole lot of different people in my network and other people that she found that she could really dive in and see, what is it like to do this career path versus that to dive deep to go to seminars that piqued her interest. Then maybe they did end up being something she liked or maybe she realized this is not what I want to do. This protected time to explore and really grow, I think that was the really important part of his time.
I'll jump in here as well, if I may, with one last note is, I think one of the greatest things you can give as a mentor to a mentee is independence. That's really what I saw just independence of thinking and idea development, and the ability to work on these projects independently or at least semi independently, was just absolutely critical. You could really see it move much faster than maybe as typical in the graduate school timeline, where over a course of a year with the sophisticated mentorship plan, as well as the trainings that we had, that Sarah's knowledge really grew fast and her ability to work independently and come to me with fully formed ideas for the next steps in project happened much faster than perhaps would be expected based both on her training background and stage of career, which was what the whole thing was about. That happened to me too. This nice parallel process there. Really think it's just amazing about the program. I'm just thinking back on that as a post doc with my experience. I did come independent. I had my ideas, but I was working under my mentors RO1 at the time. But I was really motivated to do my own work and think about how I could take her research in another direction. The diversity supplement allowed me to do that. I was able to really start my own independent area within her lab much earlier than I think I would have been able to otherwise as a post doctoral research associate. Then I also think that really helped curate my own interest to submit for grants pretty early on. I was able to be funded on my own grants throughout my entire post doctoral time. I think that really benefited me when I joined the job market because I really already had, like, curated ideas of like, what my lab was going to do and how it was distinct from my mentors. That started very early on. I don't think it would have been that way if I had stayed on her RO1, for a few years. I really think this diversity supplement helped launch in independence earlier than I think I would have. Thank you all so much. I have a few more questions. However, we run out of time. Let me take this opportunity to thank you all again, and we definitely will need your help in the near future. With that, I then return the control to Aria and Angela.
Hi, thanks so much, Woody. Thank you so much to the panel. It's really, very helpful to hear about your experiences. We really appreciate the time that you've taken to share the value of this opportunity for you and for your trainees. I just want to make sure that we're all aware that this is an opportunity that is open to everyone. This is really about enhancing diversity. On that note, I'd like to give everyone a five minute break. Why don't we come back at 2:00 P.M. We're really excited about the next segment, which is going to really delve into how to make your application more competitive. Thank you so much for your attention.