Skip to main content

Basic Sciences Mental Health & Wellness

Enacted Recommendations

Graduate Students:

  • Hired Associate Director of Trainee Well-being (RC Stabile) who acts as liaison with the UCC, has launched a series of well-being programs for our trainees, and is currently surveying student counseling needs and perceptions.
  • Partnership with UCC for counselors who focus on biomedical graduate student needs (Tamaki Silver and Ciera Scott)
  • The incorporation of wellness and DEI topics into the first-year curriculum with campus and internal partners.
  • The establishment of a policy and support structure for students to change research groups.
  • Establishment of student focus group to discuss UCC policies and concerns with UCC providers
  • Multiple recommendations to graduate programs:
    • Grading in the first year
    • Compacts with faculty on all aspects of graduate training
    • Clear guidelines on the qualifying exams including student-committee dialog in advance of the exam

Postdoctoral Fellows:

  • Hired Assistant Director for Postdoc support (Jan Varadarajan)
  • A partnership with the Vanderbilt International Research Alliance (VIRAL) to support and promote community among international trainees.

Staff:

  • Activities in the Pod to relieve stress – mindfulness breaks, HR workshops on understanding each other, DEI book club
  • Monthly meetings focused on mental health and wellness.
  • Staff-generated activities such as those initiated during the pandemic to attack isolation
    • Water cooler zoom chats
    • Discussion of struggles people were having and celebration of successes at any scale
    • Regular wellness checks
    • Slack channel to discuss non-work activities
  • Implementing recommendations from the Ingram Group to strengthen administrative support for the Pods and therein faculty.

Faculty:

  • Developing stronger mentor training including regular training sessions led by Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research facilitators
  • EMBO Laboratory Leadership Course
  • Continuing strong programming for diversity, equity and inclusion – Discovery Science Emerging Scholars (DSES), wellness sessions with Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
  • Bridge Program for lapsed funding
  • Formulation for criteria for each rank of the Research and Educator tracks and process for annual performance evaluations
  • Central administration responding to Task Force on Administrative Effectiveness report

School-Wide:

  • The hiring of a Program Manager for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Felysha Jenkins, who works with students, postdocs and faculty on DEI issues with special emphasis on inclusion.
  • Update website to streamline wellness resources