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Graduate Partnerships Program, Office of Intramural Training and Education, Office of Intramural Research, Office of the Director, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892-0234

* Present address: Office of Faculty Affairs, Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine, Ward 4-161, 303 E. Chicago Ave., Chicago, IL 60611.

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Mary J. DeLong

Graduate Partnerships Program, Office of Intramural Training and Education, Office of Intramural Research, Office of the Director, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892-0234

^† Present address: Emory University School of Medicine, 1462 Clifton Rd., Suite B-01 Dental Bldg., Atlanta, GA 30322.

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Robin Wright, Monitoring Editor

Published Online:13 Oct 2017https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.06-06-0169

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Abstract

The Graduate Partnerships Program (GPP), established in 2000, links universities with National Institutes of Health (NIH) laboratories for predoctoral training. Several partnerships required that students create collaborative dissertations between at least one NIH and one university research mentor. More than 60 students have entered into these co-mentored research collaborations, and many others established them even though not required. Much was learned about the experiences of these and other GPP students by using structured interviews as part of a formal self-study of the GPP in 2005. Complications of trying to work with two mentors are managed through careful program design and mentor selection. In the collaborative model, students develop a complex set of scientific and interpersonal skills. They lead their own independent research projects, drawing on the expertise of multiple mentors and acquiring skills at negotiating everyone's interests. They develop high levels of independence, maturity, flexibility, and the ability to see research questions from different perspectives. No evidence was found that co-mentoring diminishes the normally expected accomplishments of a student during the Ph.D. Multi-mentored dissertations require skills not all graduate students may possess this early in training, but for those who do, they can promote rapid and extensive development of skills needed for collaborative, interdisciplinary research.

Vol. 6, No. 2

June 01, 2007

85-185

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Downloads: 134

Citations: 6

History

Submitted: 20 June 2006

Revised: 12 January 2007

Accepted: 16 January 2007

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Students of the GPP are supported by funds from the Intramural Research Program of the NIH and by direct or in-kind resources of the universities in which they are enrolled. We gratefully acknowledge the extraordinary efforts of the NIH and university partnership directors in creating and continually improving their programs for the benefit of their students. A listing of the partnerships and directors can be found at http://gpp.nih.gov/UniversityPartners/Partnerships.htm. We especially acknowledge the efforts of the leaders of the NIH–OX/CAM and NIH–KI partnerships that have been instrumental in pioneering the collaborative dissertation model: Drs. Michael Lenardo and Ronald Schwartz, NIH Partnership Directors for Oxford and Cambridge; Dr. Stephen Kennedy at the University of Oxford; Dr. Kenneth G.C. Smith at the University of Cambridge; Drs. Robert Innis and Victor Pike, NIH Partnership directors with the Karolinska Institutet; and Dr. Abdel El Manira of the Karolinska Institutet. We also acknowledge the financial and programmatic support of the Division of Intramural Research, NIH, and the scientific directors of the individual institutes and centers of the NIH for commitment to the graduate students on the NIH campuses. The self-study of the GPP was supported by a grant from the NIH IRP Evaluation Set-Aside Fund. We thank Dr. Jill Keller for many helpful conversations about this study and editorial contribution to the manuscript.

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Collaborative Co-Mentored Dissertations Spanning Institutions: Influences on Student Development

Abstract