PROJECT SUMMARY: ADMINISTRATIVE CORE To drive diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts around faculty hiring, the Michigan Program for Advancing Cultural Transformation (M-PACT) at the University of Michigan (UM) proposes to hire and nurture a cohort of new faculty in the biomedical and health sciences, help build a pipeline of diverse scholars, institutionalize best practices for advancing sustainable DEI impact and broadly disseminate valuable lessons learned. Toward those objectives, M-PACT will establish a strong Administrative Core to manage and coordinate the program's activities. A major strength of the Administrative Core is the expertise and dedication of its leadership and key personnel. The diverse team of faculty and staff are in line with the primary objective of M-PACT, which is to diversify the faculty in the biomedical and health sciences at UM. The core also has strong internal and external advisory bodies that will guide program strategy, act as mechanisms of accountability, and serve to help the program navigate potential challenges and issues. With all of these assets, the core will achieve the following specific aims: 1) establish a cohesive governance structure that leverages the significant experience and expertise of the key personnel and strong support of the UM leadership to manage all administrative and financial components that will enable M-PACT to achieve its program goals in an effective and efficient manner; 2) administratively support the implementation of a cohort model to hire and successfully nurture 30 new faculty across 11 top-tier UM schools, colleges and institutes, using evidence-based practices and procedures to reduce bias in the search process, as well as to develop more diverse pools of outstanding candidates that meet the requirements of the NIH FIRST Program, including through an expansion of the vibrant NextProf program – a valuable conference for preparing URM graduate students and postdoctoral fellows nationwide for academic careers – to health sciences; and 3) disseminate important M-PACT findings, outcomes and applications. The core's efforts will contribute to the ongoing cultural transformation efforts at UM towards inclusive excellence by working with M-PACT constituencies (i.e., executive committee, Deans' Advisory Committee, Cluster Leads and Sponsor-Mentors) to institutionalize best practices. The core will work closely with the National Center for Institutional Diversity to disseminate the knowledge around best practices that results from the evaluation of M-PACT's hiring processes and faculty development programming to the broader fields of biomedical and health sciences research via conferences, academic publications, social media and other means of public communication.