# The Great Diseases: Bridging biomedical career exploration, competency building and mentoring

> **NIH NIH R25** · TUFTS UNIVERSITY BOSTON · 2022 · $258,708

## Abstract

In 2019 many bioscience and health related jobs are going unfilled, not only because too few STEM degrees
are being granted (not all of these jobs require degrees) but also because adults either lack key competencies
in thinking analytically and solving STEM-related problems or cannot apply them to STEM fields. Moreover,
minority and under-resourced communities are disproportionately under-represented, in large part because
they lack access to role models and information about what the careers entail. High school, where entire
cohorts of the US population gather to learn together for the last time, is an obvious venue in which to develop
these capacities and increase participation from all communities. Our long-standing partnership with teachers
in the majority/minority Boston Public Schools has developed a curriculum for 10th-12th graders that targets
these competencies. Teachers who have been supported in learning to teach these novel concepts are able to
significantly increase student engagement and analytical and problem-solving abilities from a large number of
diverse schools and independent of the gender and ethnicity of the students, fostering their confidence in
learning about health topics. However, this curriculum is not designed to integrate career awareness into
competency building. In this project we aim to capitalize on the partnerships, infrastructure and evaluation
tools we have already deployed successfully to create a new curriculum and professional development model:
It has three phases: (1) We will create and implement new curricula that tightly integrate career awareness
with competency building to improve student self-efficacy and outcomes expectations, critical first steps toward
selecting a bioscience career. The curriculum will also provide extensive teacher professional development
support. (2) We will develop new online dual-enrollment courses in which students can gain college credits
while still in high school. The courses will incorporate with skills and strategies needed for a successful
transition to independent learning environments into cutting-edge biomedical science topics. (3) We will
provide students with financial support so they can participate in our intensive residential college awareness
and readiness program and will optimize their success with near-peer mentor support before, during and after
participation. Once the program has been created and evaluated, we will go on to disseminate the curricula
and teacher support though our existing online infrastructure to reach maximal audiences. The new project is
significant because it integrates teaching high school students critical high-level STEM competencies with
extensive career awareness thereby fostering workforce preparation. It is innovative because it provides a
model for how medical school scientists can interact with teachers to influence curricula, teacher development
and STEM/bioscience workforce participation and because the web-based resource f...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10468661
- **Project number:** 5R25GM137369-03
- **Recipient organization:** TUFTS UNIVERSITY BOSTON
- **Principal Investigator:** Berri H Jacque
- **Activity code:** R25 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $258,708
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2020-08-01 → 2025-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10468661

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10468661, The Great Diseases: Bridging biomedical career exploration, competency building and mentoring (5R25GM137369-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10468661. Licensed CC0.

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