Conference: National Postdoctoral Association Pre-Conference Session to Promote IMPACT Fellowship Success

National Postdoctoral Association, North Potomac MD

Investigators

Abstract

National conditions among postdocs across various institutions vary greatly, with many individuals from underrepresented backgrounds lacking access to career enhancing resources available to others. At some under-resourced institutions, there is not only a lack of support and programming for postdocs, there is no office assigned to handle postdoc affairs or the structured career and professional support for postdocs is limited. Even at higher-resourced institutions, training environments and research labs can be isolating for individuals from marginalized backgrounds. To address these issues head-on, the National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) launched the IMPACT Fellowship Program in 2021 as a cohort-based professional development opportunity with community and relationship building at its core. It provides postdoctoral participants from underrepresented communities with access to personal and career resources via cohorts of peers and mentors helping Fellows strategically build upon existing skills, recognize opportunities, and advance in their careers. The NPA IMPACT Program curriculum emphasizes relational learning and self-efficacy, is designed nimbly to maximize Fellows’ sense of belonging and connection to a broader community and provide education and career pathways to postdoctoral scholars to help broaden participation in STEM and related research. The program benefits society broadly by helping create a successful, empowered first class of IMPACT Fellows from disadvantaged backgrounds, increasing their chance of achieving leadership positions. The project will empower IMPACT Program Fellows, as well as selected NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology (PRFB) Fellows, through an enriching final session of the program that will be held as a pre-conference event at the NPA’s annual conference. Fellows will meet one another as well as their mentors in person for the first time and engage in activities that promote and extend the duration of the learning objectives of the full Fellowship. Empowered by extensive advanced preparation, the day-long session will focus on exploring the critical area of personal values and their relation to Fellows scientific research and career choices centered on a pair of workshops run by experts in inclusion and value identification for scientific advancement. The NPA will facilitate the session by using a four-component strategy to achieve this result: 1) peer discussion and learning; 2) speaker-led workshops; 3) live course evaluation; and 4) networking opportunities. Fellows will also be able to explore the educational opportunities at the NPA Annual Conference, occurring during the two days directly following this session. This IMPACT session will provide tools to Fellows to use the knowledge and resources they gain to implement activities or initiatives at their institutions and to contribute back to their communities, further scaling the overall impact. The session will be evaluated using established effectiveness tools and criteria to inform program improvements for the next IMPACT course. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.