Diversity Statement

The killing of George Floyd is a painful reminder of the institutional biases that pervade our culture and continue to impede the success of entire classes of individuals in this society—including Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, the LGBTQ community, and Women. In the Center for Immunology and the Division of Rheumatic and Autoimmune Diseases, our faculty, staff and students stand in support of a culture of diversity and inclusion and condemn actions of hate and intolerance to others. We are committed to social justice in Science and Medicine and are dedicated to enhancing racial, ethnic, and gender diversity in the training and hiring of the next generation of scientists and medical doctors. 

Our NIH T35 Summer Medical Student Research Program in Infection and Immunity specifically works to address disparities in race, ethnicity, and gender in academic medicine through diligence in the recruitment of under-represented individuals to training positions in preparation for careers in Academic Medicine. Our most recent aggregated data covering the first 5 years of our NIH-sponsored program (January 2019) reported that 10% of our accepted T35 trainees were Black/African American and 10% were Hispanic/Latinx, and 53% of trainees identified as women.  Note that this research training program draws medical students from an applicant pool that is 12% Black/African American, 1.7% Native American/Alaskan Native, and5% Hispanic/Latinx, and includes 48% women. More recently we have held one additional training session in the summer of 2019 where we again admitted 2 Hispanic/Latinx individuals (25% of the total) and 50% of the trainees identified as women. We affirm that the recruitment of diverse individuals will continue to be a high priority for our T35 training program. 

The death of George Floyd deeply affects us and calls us to action. Moving forward, we resolve to recruit medical students to our T35 training program who can effectively advocate for increased diversity in Science and Medicine, consistent with our own beliefs. Additionally, we will provide formal training in implicit bias awareness and social responsibility as a component of our educational curriculum. We recognize that these are only initial steps in a long process of continual improvement towards more fully aligning our training program with the core values of respect, diversity, and inclusion.  

Sincerely,

Daniel L. Mueller, MD
Professor and Director, Division of Rheumatic and Autoimmune Diseases
Director NIH T35 Medical Student Summer Research Program in Infection and Immunity

Marc K. Jenkins, PhD
Regents and Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Director, Center for Immunology
NIH T35 Steering Committee Member 

Tucker W. LeBien, PhD
Professor and Director, Office of Discovery and Translation, CTSI/CTSA
NIH T35 Steering Committee Member

Mark E. Rosenberg, MD
Vice Dean for Education and Academic Affairs
NIH T35 Steering Committee Member

Parastoo Fazeli, MD
Assistant Professor and Director, Rheumatology Fellowship Training Program

Brian T. Fife, PhD
Associate Professor and Member, Microbiology, Immunology, and Cancer Biology Committee on Graduate Studies

Katelyn A. Pastick
Mescher Scholar

Dimple Patel, MS
Associate Dean, Office of Admissions

Milagros Silva-Morales, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow in Immunology

Ellen J. Spartz
Mescher Scholar