Impact of the Oklahoma IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence research support and mentoring program for early-stage faculty

Abstract

The Oklahoma IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (OK-INBRE) provides a formalized mentoring program and grant awards to new and early-stage faculty throughout Oklahoma. The OK-INBRE Research Project Investigator (RPI) award program has supported 30 faculty from both research-intensive universities and primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs) over the past 15 yr. To examine the impact of this program, we assessed the career trajectory of OK-INBRE RPI awardees and compared their productivity with a control group of applicants who applied for but did not receive an RPI award. A mixed-methods approach was employed to assess longitudinal programmatic impact. Regression analyses were conducted to estimate the effect of an RPI award on faculty productivity, controlling for institutional affiliation. Key informant interviews were conducted to capture qualitative information about satisfaction and additional outcomes. OK-INBRE RPI awardees had a higher number in total and mean number of publications. In achieving extramural funding, RPI awardees were 12.5 times (P = 0.005) as likely to receive a grant award of any type and 4.5 times (P = 0.06) as likely to receive a subsequent federal grant as those in the control group. Many RPI awardees attributed their career success to OK-INBRE, but they also helped to identify barriers to advancement or productivity associated with their specific home institutions. The combined data indicate that OK-INBRE plays a significant role in launching new and early-stage investigators on a path toward independent research careers, which will in turn have a positive impact on the future of the biomedical research enterprise in Oklahoma.NEW & NOTEWORTHY The Oklahoma IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (OK-INBRE) has been offering a formalized mentoring program and grant awards to new and early-stage faculty throughout Oklahoma for the past 15 yr. The program has been shown to play a significant role in launching participants on a path toward productive research careers, which will in turn be impactful on the biomedical research enterprise in Oklahoma.

Keywords: biomedical research; career development; early-career faculty; mentorship; research productivity.

Figure 1.

Nonparametric distribution of number of publications between Research Project Investigator (RPI) awardees and nonawardees. Because of the nonparametric distribution, the Wilcoxon rank-sum test assigns a rank or score for each RPI awardee (ranking distribution on left) or nonawardee (ranking distribution on right) based on the total number of publications, where the higher the ranking the higher the number of publications. The rankings were then summed for each group. The medians, represented by the diamond symbol in the boxplot, of the rankings between the 2 groups were statistically different, with the median rankings (e.g., greater total number of publications) for the RPI awardee group higher than that of the nonawardee group. The Z score and its significance indicate the statistical significance between the rankings of the 2 groups.

Figure 2.

Receiving a grant by institution and Research Project Investigator (RPI) status. Descriptive statistics were generated to tabulate % of the sample receiving a grant of any type by type of institution [research intensive vs. primarily undergraduate institution (PUI)] and RPI award. Among those in research-intensive institutions, 90% of RPI awardees received a grant of any type compared with 47% of nonawardees. This difference is statistically significant [Cochran–Mantel–Haenszel (CMH) statistics = 4.88, P = 0.027]. Among those at PUIs, 35% of RPI awardees received a grant of any type compared with 7% of nonawardees, and the observed difference is marginally statistically significant at P = 0.063 (CMH statistics = 3.45).

Figure 3.

The effect of Research Project Investigator (RPI) award on number of grants obtained. Among a subsample of those who had secured grant funding, Oklahoma IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (OK-INBRE) RPI awards demonstrated impact on the total number of grants received. Twenty percent of the RPI awardees had at least 1 successful grant application, whereas only 15% of faculty nonawardees received a subsequent award. No nonawardees were able to obtain 4 or more grants, whereas 10% of RPI awardees reported 4–9 and 7% reported 10 or more successful grant applications.