# UAB/Tuskegee Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation (UAB/TU FIRST) Partnership (NIH U54) Travel Supplement > **NIH NIH U54** · UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM · 2024 · $35,226 ## Abstract Introduction This purpose of this proposal is to request supplemental funding for the UAB/Tuskegee FIRST Partnership (U54-CA267746-000538702) to cover costs for travel and lodging expenses for faculty hired under the program (Benjamin-Carver FIRST Scientists) to attend the annual FIRST Grantees Meeting. Our request covers the duration of the project period. Outlined below are A) the justification for this request, B) the recruitment plan/timeline, C) the budget justification for the requested funds. A. Justification Support for FIRST faculty travel and lodging to the FIRST Annual Grantees Meetings was not originally included in RFA or the Notice of Award for U54-CA267746-000538702. Consequently, our existing award does not include funds for travel and lodging expenses for our Benjamin-Carver FIRST Scientists to attend the FIRST Annual Grantees Meetings. Because attendance at the annual meeting is an expectation of the FIRST faculty hires, this supplement will provide the funding necessary to cover these expenses. B. Recruitment Plan and Timeline Benjamin-Carver Scientist Recruitment and Hiring Process Within the overall research theme of Health Disparities, our recruitment and cluster hiring focuses on four research areas where health disparities are particularly evident: Cancer, Obesity/Diabetes, Cardiovascular Disease, and Neuroscience. Having 12 total positions allows the UAB/TU FIRST Partnership to hire four clusters of three junior faculty across these areas of opportunity. Across the two institutions, our goal is to hire 9 faculty at UAB and 3 at Tuskegee. The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), through the Heersink School of Medicine (HSOM), has used “coordinated hiring” in the past, but both UAB and Tuskegee University (TU) are newcomers to cluster hiring or targeted recruitment to attract diverse faculty in specific research thematic areas. We utilized the Education Advisory Board’s playbook for effective cluster hiring to ensure successful integration of all necessary elements. This helped us plan our process and guaranteed that we were including all important program components like inclusion of stakeholders and sustainability. To support this initiative, the UAB HSOM provided the experienced staff and infrastructure to lead the recruitment, using its Office for Strategic Recruitment team to coordinate the search. Doing so provided uniformity in the process and experience for recruits and provided the resources and knowledge to create a high-quality recruitment experience for candidates. Application review and candidate selection are done through the Recruitment and Selection Committee. The Recruitment and Selection Committee is primarily responsible for placement of position announcements and sharing of the position announcement through multiple appropriate channels. In order to attract diverse applicants, we are intentional in our recruitment, applying traditional and non-traditional strategies. We make special efforts to adve... ## Key facts - **NIH application ID:** 11004865 - **Project number:** 3U54CA267746-03S1 - **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM - **Principal Investigator:** Raegan Winston Durant - **Activity code:** U54 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.) - **Funding institute:** NIH - **Fiscal year:** 2024 - **Award amount:** $35,226 - **Award type:** 3 - **Project period:** 2021-09-22 → 2026-08-31 ## Primary source NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/11004865 ## Citation > US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 11004865, UAB/Tuskegee Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation (UAB/TU FIRST) Partnership (NIH U54) Travel Supplement (3U54CA267746-03S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-27 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/11004865. Licensed CC0. --- *[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*