Program Faculty

Program Faculty is a sub-section of the 25-page Program Plan’s “B. Program Plan” component. This section expands on Table 2 to illustrate that the proposed program has an appropriate number of mentors with sufficient experience, expertise, and funding to support trainees’ research activities.

Demonstrate the following:

• Efforts are made to recruit mentors from a wide variety of backgrounds (i.e. career stages and scientific disciplines)
• As of January 25, 2025, Forms I requires a clearly defined plan to ensure all mentors complete formal, ongoing mentor training and periodic refreshers
  • Describe how mentors are trained on "evidence-informed practices promoting development for trainees from all backgrounds"
    • Suggested topics include:
      • Aligning expectations
      • Maintaining effective communication
      • Fostering independence
      • Assessing scholars’ understanding of scientific research
      • Enhancing professional development
      • Addressing equity and inclusion (per NIH FORMS I T32 guidelines, which is still active as of January 29, 2025 when this content was updated)
      • Articulating your mentoring philosophy and plan
  • All mentors should have a mentoring philosophy appropriately tailored to the needs of potential trainees
  • Describe the mentor selection process and criteria
  • Describe how mentoring will be monitored, including:
    • The administrative oversight structure
    • Trainee/mentor match effectiveness
  • Practices should evolve and reflect changes in the relevant research area
  • Describe a plan for removing mentors who do not meet expectations
• Mentors have strong records as researchers including recent publications, relevant funding, etc.
• Mentors have strong records of training students at the proposed levels (pre-/post-docs), translating into trainees generating publishable research results
• How trainees will participate in ongoing research projects with their mentors
• A clearly defined collaborative relationship between mentor and trainee regarding joint publications, sponsorship of student research, etc.
• That mentors have prior training experience and relevant active research to the proposed focus area (for early career/junior mentors, post-doc or non-faculty mentoring experience applies)
• Criteria to evaluate, appoint, and remove faculty as needed
• For co-mentorship structures, mentors effectively coordinate communication, training, and responsibilities

Note: Ensure that a substantial number of mentors have active research projects for trainees to participate on.

Data Table References

Incorporate the following into the "B. Program Plan" > "b. Program Faculty" section of your Program Plan. Learn more about Data Tables on the Data Table Support webpage.

Table 2. Participating Faculty Members

• Demonstrate sufficient number of faculty with appropriate level of expertise

Table 4. Active Research Support of Participating Faculty Members

• Demonstrate appropriate ongoing projects for trainee participation
• Analyze data in terms of total and average grant support
• Comment on inclusion of faculty without research grant support, and explain how the research of trainees who may work with these faculty members would be supported

Table 5A/B. Publications of Trainees Supported by this Program

• Demonstrate that mentors have proven track records in training researchers that contribute meaningfully to the scientific body of knowledge
• Provide evidence that recent graduates of mentor's trainees conducted rigorous research advancing scientific knowledge and/or technologies, with increasing self-direction
  • Summarize these data, including, for example, the average number of publications, and how many trainees have published their work
• Indicate how many trainees are published as first author and provide an explanation if available for trainees who completed their doctoral or postdoctoral training without any first-author publications
• New Applications Only: List publications for trainees' representative of those who would be appointed if the grant is awarded

Page Limit: Must fit within the Program Plan’s 25 page maximum. About 6 pages.

Format: Section header: “B. Program Plan” | Subsection header: “b. Program Faculty”

Component Instruction Index

Access detailed instructions for each component of the Research Training Program Plan. If you have further questions contact GSUTraining@mednet.ucla.edu.