This month, the Board of Regents approved the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Biomedical Sciences (IGPBS), a new umbrella Ph.D. and training program that will reorganize six current UNMC basic science Ph.D.-granting programs.
About IGPBS
The current Ph.D. programs being united under the IGPBS are those directed by the College of Medicine’s basic science departments and the Eppley Cancer Institute, including:
- Biochemistry and Molecular Biology;
- Cellular and Integrative Physiology;
- Genetics, Cell Biology and Anatomy;
- Pathology and Microbiology;
- Pharmacology and Experimental Neuroscience; and
- Cancer Research.
The reorganization will allow the programs within the IGPBS to provide stronger interdisciplinary training in UNMC’s major research themes, provide consistency in UNMC’s high academic standards in areas such as admissions criteria, coursework standards and other areas, increase external funding for graduate training and make UNMC’s recruitment of graduate students more competitive nationally.
“UNMC’s major interdisciplinary research themes, such as cancer research or genetic research, will all benefit from having broader faculty participation in each of these interdisciplinary research areas,” said Dele Davies, M.D., vice chancellor for academic affairs. “In addition, in a competitive job market for individuals with a Ph.D. in a biomedical field, the IGPBS umbrella will help to produce highly qualified biomedical Ph.D. recipients who are more competitive in the job market.”
Applications for the new program opened on Oct. 18.
“Research is becoming increasingly multidisciplinary,” said Daniel Monaghan, Ph.D., professor of UNMC Department of Pharmacology & Experimental Neuroscience and co-chair of the committee that help create the new program. “Training therefore has to be more interdisciplinary.
“We’re hoping that having these interdisciplinary programs, having multiple faculty from different departments participate in individual integrated graduate programs, will make each of those areas stronger and provide better training opportunities and stronger, broader training for our students.”
The new program will make it easier to recruit top students, said Vimla Band, Ph.D., chair of the UNMC Department of Genetics, Cell Biology and Anatomy, who chaired the initial task force on the project.
“Most institutions already have interdisciplinary programs,” Dr. Band said. “In order for us to compete with them, we need to have an interdisciplinary program. Not only is science moving in that direction, but also it’s a competition. If you give students more choices, they like it.”
Interdisciplinary training also is valued by extramural funding sources such as the National Institutes of Health, and the IGBPS may help position UNMC for new types of funding, such as NIH training grants.
“Based on the level of our extramural funding at UNMC, if you compare us to other institutions with similar amounts of funding, we are underpowered in terms of training grants,” said Karen Gould, Ph.D., associate professor and vice chair for Graduate Education in the UNMC Department of Genetics, Cell Biology & Anatomy, and co-chair of the committee that helped create the IGPBS.
The IGPBS will allow UNMC to create multidisciplinary training programs that can be funded as T32 training grants — in fact, one of the goals of the effort was to create interdisciplinary graduate programs that would support these training programs.
Because the IGPBS is a degree-granting program, it also offers more flexibility for international students, said Dr. Gould.
“International students are required to have an offer of admission from a degree-granting program to get their student visa,” she said. “Previously, international students couldn’t come in through the Biomedical Research Training Program — it was the most flexible graduate program, but it was an entry program, not a degree-granting program.”
Moving forward, faculty participation will be integral to the success of the program, Dr. Monaghan said.
“The new structure will give us the opportunity to make graduate training much better, but it’s going to require ongoing follow-up by the faculty to truly make it better,” he said. “Given the dedicated and excellent faculty that we have, I am confident this will happen.”