Baseline Characteristics of the 2015-2019 First Year Student Cohorts of the NIH Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity (BUILD) Program

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. 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. 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.

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