GSA MENTORING AND CARREER DEVELOPMENT TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE WORKSHOP
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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT For 75 years, the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) has changed, impacted, advanced, and empowered the scientific and scholarly study of aging. It has effectively promoted human welfare by integrating and expanding gerontology sciences in all its areas. The GSA annual scientific meeting (ASM) emphasizes research, education, training, and policy related to the biological, psychosocial, and behavioral aspects of health, disease and human rights impacting the sciences of aging and human lifespan. The GSA ASM features an outstanding educational, scientific program and social events designed to promote cross-disciplinary exchange and dissemination of multidisciplinary aging research. One of the society’s overarching aims is to cultivate the professional development of early career professionals and students at its annual meeting through engagement in diverse educational outlets. We are proposing a NIA Research Conference Grant (R13) entitled “GSA Mentoring and Career Development Technical Assistance Workshop” to support early career trainees (pre- and post- doctoral) from underrepresented minority (URM) backgrounds to participate in a pre-conference technical assistance workshop series to be offered at the GSA ASM from 2021-2025. The workshop series is designed to promote training, education, networking, and the interaction between diverse URM trainees, mid-, and senior level investigators who have prominent leadership roles in the field of gerontology. To accomplish the proposed objectives and goals of this research conference grant, we will develop recruitment approaches, training, mentoring, evaluation, dissemination, and sustainability of the workshops (Aim 1); implement the GSA MCD TAWs annually for five years and provide travel award support for 100 trainees (Aim 2); we will regularly evaluate (and modify as needed) the workshops’ curriculum, faculty, trainees and ongoing educational and mentoring activities delivered via surveys, webinars, focus groups, and emailed questionnaires (Aim 3); we will facilitate dissemination of the workshops’ curriculum, outcomes, outputs and evaluation results via social media, webinars, lectures, white paper reports, peer review publications, and presentations at scientific meetings (Aim 4). We are requesting support from the NIA to assist with the recruitment, inclusion, and training of talented early career investigators from URM backgrounds to receive travel fellowship awards to participate in the GSA MCD TAW series. The travel awards will help trainees with hotel, transportation, registration, and family care (i.e. childcare) expense.
