Research Training and Mentorship Program to Inspire Diverse Undergraduates toward Regenerative Medicine Careers (RAMP)

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Grant Award Details

Grant Type:

COMPASS Training Grant

Grant Number:

EDUC5-13636

Investigator(s):

Name:

Dr. Huinan Hannah Liu

Institution:

The Regents of the University of California on behalf of its Riverside Campus

Type:

Award Value:

$2,910,000

Status:

Active

Progress Reports

Reporting Period:

Year 1

RAMP program established the website (ramp.engr.ucr.edu), trainee application forms, review committee and review criteria in the first year of program. RAMP reached out to all undergraduate students in broad STEM majors in Bourns College of Engineering (BCOE) and College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences (CNAS) through emails, flyers, events, and dedicated staff in the Student Success Office at each college at the University of California at Riverside (UCR). RAMP program has begun the training of 4 students in the fundamentals of stem cell research. Because the students started the program in June 2023, they have not yet taken any academic stem cell science courses. However, in early-July 2023, the cohort was part of a week-long stem-cell research methodologies training program, conducted at UC Riverside’s Stem Cell Center Core Facility. They also received training in scholarly research methods and practices, professional development workshops, and participated in group critiques of their oral presentations. In addition to the explicit knowledge that these activities transmitted, many of them also prompted students to reflect on tacit knowledge as a significant aspect of scholarly practice. RAMP has also provided trainees with ample opportunities to practice the skills that they are both developing and refining: in the lab, through outreach, and in their writing and presentations. At the end of the summer, the cohort participated in two symposia at UCR, one at which two students presented posters, and the other at which all four students gave oral presentations. In addition to the training and support provided by the leadership team, in-lab mentors have helped trainees one-on-one and there have been frequent communications with RAMP leadership. For administrative mentoring support, RAMP leadership met with students at a minimum of once per month to ensure that they were progressing through the program as designed. Our trainees have been recruited from disparate disciplines and have all found mentors relevant to their interests. RAMP will continue to graft fundamental science education onto a skill-acquisition framework that enables students to learn methods that, though often ambiguous, are also among the most fundamental practices of scientific scholarship.

Grant Application Details

Application Title:

Research Training and Mentorship Program to Inspire Diverse Undergraduates toward Regenerative Medicine Careers (RAMP)

Statement of Benefit to California:

RAMP belongs to a university that is situated in a medically-underserved region of California. And while this region also lags behind most of California in terms of economic opportunities, it is also demographically diverse. Given the local needs, our university strives to put special value on those student accomplishments that provide value for communities. RAMP has been designed with this spirit in mind. That is, as long as students’ home communities continue to face issues like medical hardship, student success will remain incomplete (as will the success of university that educated them). With this dynamic in mind, CIRM’s COMPASS grant is a rare opportunity to align the interests of individual students with those of their communities. In fact, RAMP highlights the responsibilities of our university and our state. The citizens of our area face medical hardships—both as a result of an impoverished healthcare infrastructure and from diseases that are currently difficult to treat. It is our responsibility to use programs like COMPASS to attack the two sides of this problem. RAMP is well situated to do that: our university’s demographics give us a strong pool of diverse applicants to draw from and our stem-cell research program is on the cutting edge of medical research. Moreover, RAMP undergraduates who graduate into healthcare, academic, or policy careers will contribute to the diversification of those industries. Of those three, healthcare is the most obvious industry that would have meaningful impact on our region. If our university develops healthcare treatments and graduates more doctors who stay local, that’s a success. But if a substantial portion of those doctors already call this area home, that’s another kind of success. Patients often lack culturally responsive healthcare. Although that phenomenon is not always easy to quantify or measure, it is yet another barrier to an already underserved population. IT will take years, if not decades for RAMP’s capacity to affect this problem to be fully actualized. However, there are smaller ways that we contribute to building the pathways towards that future: e.g., our university’s program that supports medical school applicants has promised to include any RAMP students interested in that path; our patient outreach events put students out in those communities now, not in some hoped for future. RAMP will thus have meaningful effects on its California region now and in the future. And while we develop this program’s interventions, we will actively seek the community’s input and feedback: for instance, in the third year of the program, we plan a public workshop to assess RAMP effectiveness. This workshop will enable us to strategize how to continue to develop, and expand on, this type of work going forward. It will also be an occasion for RAMP to offer a public account of its work, which is especially important for those local communities that have a stake in it.