Stanford ADVANCE: A Novel Program for Transitioning PhD Students to Graduate School
Laura Sanman, Rhea Richardson, Vanessa Burns, Lilian Lam, Benjamin Naecker, Terry Reyes, Alex Scharr, Tiffany Williams, Laleh Rongere, Anthony Ricci, Terrance Mayes
Stanford School of Medicine, Stanford CA
2013 Program Outcomes
Participant Demographics
Graduate Student
Program Leaders
80
White
25%
African
American
6%
Unreported
6% Native
American
6%
Programmatic Decisions
Informal Mentoring
Postdoctoral
Mentors
(Journal Club)
Academic
Development
Laboratory
Mentors
ADVANCE
Students
Academic
Development
Career
Options
% Confidence
40
30
20
10
60
40
20
Post-ADVANCE
Pre-ADVANCE
30
20
10
0
Post-ADVANCE
Pre-ADVANCE
Post-ADVANCE
% Confidence
% Confidence
60
40
20
60
40
20
Post-ADVANCE
% Confidence
40
20
0
“Meeting students from other programs and getting
settled before classes begin. We were definitely
lucky to have this experience”
--ADVANCE fellow 2013
Post-ADVANCE
Post-ADVANCE
Oral
Presentations
80
60
40
20
0
Post-ADVANCE
20
Pre-ADVANCE
80
60
40
Resource
Awareness
80
Professional
Development
Academic
Development
60
0
Pre-ADVANCE
Coursework
Community Building
80
0
Pre-ADVANCE
Division of Time in Workshops
Time
Management
80
Pre-ADVANCE
Provide leadership opportunities for current graduate students
40
Goal
Setting
0
16%
ç
50
Programmatic Assessment
% Confidence
Increase faculty confidence in admitting students from diverse
backgrounds
Post-Graduate
Planning
60
0
Pre-ADVANCE
Workshop Development and Evaluation
56%
Female
80
80
28%
Male
Graduate Career
Planning
Research
Preparedness
Foster community, academic excellence, and career readiness
within the incoming––graduate students
0
Academic, Social, and Career Development Metrics
SBSA/BioAIMS,
Biosciences
Community
Increase the socio-economic, racial, sexual-orientation, and
gender diversity of the graduate student population
30
10
Asian
19%
0
Goals
40
20
50
Community
Building
50
% Confidence
ç
60
Latino
38%
% Confidence
Principal
Investigators
70
% Confidence
Office of Graduate
Education
Administrators
% Confidence
Background:
A major challenge that students face when transitioning to research-based PhD programs is that graduate
education comes with a completely different set of expectations than that of undergraduate education. In addition,
students entering PhD programs often have different socioeconomic, academic, and ethnic backgrounds, making it
difficult to prepare universally effective programming to ease the transition to graduate school. The Stanford
Bioscience ADVANCE Summer Institute was created to address this unique challenge. ADVANCE is a
collaborative effort to ease the transition to graduate school for Biosciences PhD students, with a focus on those
with diverse backgrounds. The specific goals of ADVANCE are to foster community, academic excellence, and
career readiness in an interactive learning environment. To achieve these goals, we held social events, panel
discussions on careers and campus resources, workshops on scientific presentation and grant writing, and provided
students with postdoctoral, faculty, and student mentors. We hypothesized that this program would improve student
confidence, facilitate graduate and post-graduate career planning, and promote academic success. We further
hypothesized that student feedback would facilitate future event planning for PhD students.
Methods:
ç
We chose to measure the success of ADVANCE through surveys and personal dialogue. Surveys were collected
before and after the ADVANCE program and after each event. Students reported self-confidence, readiness,
awareness of resources, and effectiveness of each event. Academic success will be measured longitudinally by
scoring time to degree, number of publications, and intellectual satisfaction.
Results:
Students reported overall increased confidence in their academic skill-set and preparedness for future endeavors.
However, students reported dissatisfaction with career panels due to perceived applicability to older students and
lack of intimacy. Notably, senior PhD students attending these panels did not share this dissatisfaction.
Conclusions:
The inaugural year of the Stanford ADVANCE Summer Institute met its goals of fostering community and building
academic skills. It also identified needs of students in different stages of their PhD; incoming students benefited
from skill- and community-building exercises while older students benefited from career advice. In future years, we
will provide more interactive discussions, especially regarding career planning. We hypothesize that this will
increase overall reported satisfaction with and effectiveness of ADVANCE.
Program Structure
Percent
Abstract
60
40
20
0
Pre-ADVANCE
Post-ADVANCE
Pre-ADVANCE
Post-ADVANCE
Summary
“I fully support the idea of the program and wish
I had something like this when I was a new grad
student”
--Stanford faculty member
ADVANCE recruited and benefited a diverse population of students
There was a consistently general increase in academic preparedness
for amongst participants
ç
There was a higher level of social inclusion and satisfaction amongst participants
Noted dissatisfaction with career programming - perhaps due to differential needs of graduate students at different stages of
their PhD
ç
“I really feel like I am in a great position to start
my program now. I have a lot of tools to think
about what things to look out for in my first year
and continuing on through grad school and a
post-grad career."
--ADVANCE fellow 2013
Logistical:
Future Directions
Point person within each Biosciences Home Program
Post-Event Student Evaluation
––
Academic
Development
Career
Development
Community
Building
Programmatic:
ç
Expand upon transition to graduate school programming
Key career programming towards a more interactive format
Collect longitudinal information regarding success of participants – including retention, fellowship awarded, time to degree
Reading Scientific Papers
Presenting Scientific Papers
Transitioning To Graduate School
Grant Writing Workshop
Navigating Stanford Resources
Data Blitz
Journal Club
Strengths Quest Skills Assessment
Postdoc Panel
Faculty Panel
Industry Panel
Imposter Syndrome Workshop
Bio-N-Beer
Hiking Excursion
Scavenger Hunt
Happy Hours
Closing Celebration
Teamwork Exercise
Acknowledgements
Funding:
Office of Graduate Education
Stanford Biosciences Biochemistry, Bioengineering, Biology, BMI, Biophysics, Neurosciences, and Stem Cell Home Programs
Support:
0
1
2
3
4
Rating
5
6
7
8
Stanford Biosciences Student Association (SBSA)
ç
Biomedical Association for the Interest of Minority Students (BioAIMS)
Office of Graduate Education (OGE)
Daniel Herschlag
Program Leaders and Aides
Principal Investigators that took ADVANCE Students
Postdoctoral mentors
Panelists