Post-baccalaureate Perspectives on the Inclusion of Well-Being and Resilience Resources in a Research Education Program
Esteban Vazquez-Hidalgo, PhD1; William S. Bush, PhD, MS1,2,3; Hua Lou, PhD2; Dana C. Crawford, PhD1,2,3
Departments of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences and Genetics and Genome Sciences; Cleveland Institute for Computational Biology; Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH
Post-baccalaureate Research Education Programs (PREPs) are one of several National Institutes of Health (NIH)-supported programs designed to increase exposure of recent diverse college graduates to biomedical research. Established in 2000, PREP began with 16 programs and has since expanded to >50 nationwide. These one-year research-intensive programs prepare Scholars for PhD or MD/PhD programs. CasePREP, the Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) PREP, was established in 2007. While all PREPs offer courses, workshops, and other activities for skills and professional development, few PREPs offer resilience training. We recently included the NIH Becoming a Resilient Scientist Series and counseling services for the 2023-2024 cohort of six Scholars to address the needs expressed by the previous classes and a general recognition of the lasting impacts of disrupted learning due to COVID-19. To evaluate the impact of this change in the CasePREP curriculum, we administered the Brief Resilience Scale (BRS), available as PhenX Toolkit protocol ID 251401, at the start of the 2024 spring semester. The majority (67%) of surveyed Scholars scored low in resilience, with "I usually come through difficult times with little trouble" scoring lowest. We will re-administer the BRS, conduct group interviews to quantitatively and qualitatively assess Scholars' perspectives on the added resources, and report the results. While the sample size is small for definitive conclusions, we hypothesize that completion of the NIH series coupled with counseling services will increase self-reported resilience. We expect that PREP Scholars with similar resources will maintain resilience in graduate school leading to higher completion rates.
Oral presentation at the National Diversity in STEM, Phoenix, AZ, October 31, 2024.
