Special Collection of Perspectives on Broadening Participation

Abstract

This is an introduction to a special collection of perspectives on Broadening Participation by leaders in the field on how the life sciences community can cultivate and harness the talents of people from all backgrounds.

This collection is envisioned as a follow-up to the 2016 Special Issue on Broadening Participation (Gibbs and Marsteller, 2016a) and invited leaders with a demonstrated track record of effective action in this area at the student training, program development, institutional leadership, and policy levels to share the wisdom they have developed from years of practice and to put forward provocative ideas to stimulate the community to action. The Special Issue included the perspectives of funding agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (Valantine et al., 2016), the National Science Foundation (James and Singer, 2016), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (Parker and Wagner, 2016), and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (Asai and Bauerle, 2016), and more than 25 research articles. These perspectives allow individuals whose day-to-day work underpins much of this empirical research the opportunity to respond, and focus the life science community on how to move forward in meeting the critical national need of ensuring that it can cultivate and harness the talents of people from all backgrounds (Gibbs and Marsteller, 2016b).