Abstract:

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a pandemic for the COVID-19 virus. In response to the public health crisis, as in most states, Puerto Rico established strict lockdown measures to decrease the spread of the disease in our population of three million citizens. Since March 2020, the University of Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras Campus (UPRRP), the flagship campus of the only public higher education system on the island and one of the top Hispanic Serving institutions (HSI) in the USA, moved all academic and research endeavors to online platforms. This institutional action significantly impacted the academic and research training programs sponsored by the National Institute of Health (NIH), among them the ENDURE Program locally known as NeuroID (Neuroscience Research Opportunities to Increase Diversity). The NeuroID fellows are Hispanics from different gender, race, social status, and physical needs. The main goal of the program is to increase diversity in the neurosciences by establishing a cohort of interested undergraduate students. Before the pandemic, and as part of the NeuroID program research training objectives, students attended an on-site summer intense 9-weeks research experience at UPRRP. Resolute to move forward with the 2020 summer research experience, the program directors developed a multidimensional virtual program using digital platforms and objective-driven transformative activities.

The summer training was adapted to the virtual stage and divided into seven initiatives:
(a) a comprehensive integration to the research experience
(b) peer-lead basic Neuroscience lectures
(c) scholarly meetings with UPR neuroscientists
(d) BP-ENDURE summer virtual seminar series
(e) Neuroscience and society interactive lectures
(f) workshop on Software Carpentry
(g) workshops on the development of a professional skill set in the Neurosciences and
(h) discussion forum on issues of racism, inequity, and discrimination in the sciences.

Ten NeuroID fellows from primarily undergraduate institutions in the San Juan metropolitan area participated. Evaluation data collected examined the students’ overall satisfaction with the virtual summer program, how the initiatives transformed their knowledge and elicited a successful research and professional training in the neurosciences. Findings from the external evaluation revealed a highly significant level of satisfaction from the participants with the use of the online platform to conduct the proposed activities. Most initiatives had a positive impact in engaging the students in learning about the neurosciences, strengthening their computational skills, improving their communication skills in science, designing and conducting a research project during the summer, developing a mentor-mentee relationship, improving networking abilities within the research setting, improving their scientific identity, understanding the importance of neuroscience research and how it impacts society and becoming advocates of diversity and inclusion. Several recommendations were offered to improve the quality of the virtual experience. Overall, the data collected strongly supports the effectiveness of the present multidimensional and virtual summer research training program in the neurosciences. Thus, this novel summer program is a model for online research training with different tiers of transformative interventions.

Keywords:

Online education, summer internships, neuroscience, undergraduate, pandemic, evaluation, hispanic serving institution.