Baseline Characteristics of the 2015-2019 First Year Student Cohorts of the NIH Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity (BUILD) Program
Creators: name: Norris, Keith C.
name: McCreath, Heather E.
name: Hueffer, Karsten
name: Aley, Stephen B.
name: Chavira, Gabriela
name: Christie, Christina A.
name: Crespi, Catherine M.
name: Crespo, Carlos
name: D’Amour, Gene
name: Eagan, Kevin
name: Echegoyen, Lourdes E.
name: Feig, Andrew
name: Foroozesh, Maryam
name: Guerrero, Lourdes R.
name: Johanson, Kelly
name: Kamangar, Farin
name: Kingsford, Laura
name: LaCourse, William
name: Maccalla, Nicole Marie-Gerardi
name: Márquez-Magaña, Leticia
name: Mathur, Ambika
name: Maton, Kenneth
name: Mehravaran, Shiva
name: Morales, Danielle X.
name: Nakazono, Terry
name: Ofili, Elizabeth
name: Okuyemi, Kolawole
name: Ott, Laura
name: Parangan-Smith, Audrey
name: Pfund, Christine
name: Purnell, Dawn
name: Reynolds, Arleigh
name: Rous, Phillip J.
name: Saetermoe, Carrie
name: Snyder, Katherine
name: Vishwanatha, Jamboor K.
name: Wagler, Amy
name: Wallace, Steven P.
name: Seeman, Teresa
Publisher: name: Ethnicity & Disease
Year: 2020
Subjects: Biomedical Research
Diversity
Underrepresented Students
Workforce Training

description: Objective: The biomedical/behavioral sciences lag in the recruitment and advancement of students from historically underrepresented backgrounds. In 2014 the NIH created the Diversity Program Consortium (DPC), a prospective, multi-site study comprising 10 Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity (BUILD) institutional grantees, the National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN) and a Coordination and Evaluation Center (CEC). This article describes baseline characteristics of four incoming, first-year student cohorts at the primary BUILD institutions who completed the Higher Education Research Institute, The Freshmen Survey between 2015-2019. These freshmen are the primary student cohorts for longitudinal analyses comparing outcomes of BUILD program participants and non-participants. Design: Baseline description of first-year students entering college at BUILD institutions during 2015-2019. Setting: Ten colleges/universities that each received &lt;$7.5mil/yr in NIH Research Project Grants and have high proportions of low-income students. Participants: First-year undergraduate students who participated in BUILD-sponsored activities and a sample of non-BUILD students at the same BUILD institutions. A total of 32,963 first-year students were enrolled in the project; 64% were female, 18% Hispanic/Latinx, 19% African American/Black, 2% American Indian/Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, 17% Asian, and 29% White. Twenty-seven percent were from families with an income &lt;$30,000/yr and 25% were their family's first generation in college. Planned outcomes: Primary student outcomes to be evaluated over time include undergraduate biomedical degree completion, entry into/completion of a graduate biomedical degree program, and evidence of excelling in biomedical research and scholarship. Conclusions: The DPC national evaluation has identified a large, longitudinal cohort of students with many from groups historically underrepresented in the biomedical sciences that will inform institutional/national policy level initiatives to help diversify the biomedical workforce.