Choose Development! to broaden participation of undergraduates in developmental biology research

Society For Developmental Biology, Bethesda MD

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Abstract

The Society for Developmental Biology (SDB) is expanding the community of developmental biologists by intentionally recruiting undergraduate students from a wide range of higher education institutions for a two-summer internship in developmental biology. SDB is able to achieve this goal because of the Society’s unique infrastructure already in place by the Choose Development! (CD) Program (2013-present). It provides a research-intensive training experience to undergraduate students at a lab of an established developmental biologist, a multi-level mentoring plan for each student, society-wide recognition and networking activities at national and regional meetings, and continued professional support following their participation in the CD Program. Key outcomes of the Program thus far include: (1) Of a total of 60 undergraduate Fellows, 43 have completed their baccalaureate degree, 27 have entered a graduate program in developmental biology or closely related field (including one now an assistant professor at UC Santa Barbara, one hired as embryologist at Langone Fertility Clinic), six have entered medical school (one in MD/PhD), and three have taken gap years in preparation towards submitting a more competitive application to graduate schools while working in their previous mentors’ lab; (2) to date, a total of 10 publications have involved the research of CD Fellows, with 8 manuscripts having a Fellow as a co-author and 2 crediting Fellows in the acknowledgements; (3) increased awareness and appreciation across the entire SDB community led to proactive actions aimed at expanding the membership of its working committees and its Board of Directors. The SDB increased representation from non-R1 institutions, welcomed postdoctoral fellows and graduate students on the Board and actively widened the selection of speakers at its annual meetings to better represent its membership and scientific breadth. These cumulative outcomes of the CD Program have provided the undergraduate Fellows a welcoming atmosphere within the entire SDB community and has positively impacted their continuation in the field. Proposed educational and mentoring activities are aimed to further enhance the two-summer immersion requirement of participants in their summer research laboratories that study the development of multicellular organisms at the molecule, cell, tissue, organ and whole organism levels and cover topics ranging from stem cells and nuclear reprogramming to evolutionary developmental and systems biology, and from computational analysis to identify gene regulatory networks involved in morphogenesis and organogenesis to the etiology of disease - all topics of great relevance to the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.