NEWS | IN DEPTH726 14 FEBRUARY 2020 • VOL 367 ISSUE 6479 sciencemag.org SCIENCEPHOTO: NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTHT
he National Institutes of Health (NIH)
is embracing a largely untested method
of simultaneously hiring several junior
faculty members in its latest attempt to
eliminate an embarrassing racial gap
in who receives NIH grants.
Last month, a top-level advisory group
greenlighted a 9-year, $241 million initia-
tive dubbed the Faculty Institutional Re-
cruitment for Sustainable Transformation
(FIRST) program. NIH plans to fund a
dozen institutions that pledge to hire 10 or
more early-career faculty members, within
a span of 1 or 2 years, through a search that
does not specify a narrow area of expertise
or a particular academic rank. NIH offi-
cials believe casting a wider net through
cluster hiring will yield more junior fac-
ulty from groups traditionally under-
represented in academic medicine—
women, black people, Hispanics, Native
Americans, and those with disabilities—
who will then go on to win an NIH grant.
FIRST is modeled on NIH’s Distinguished
Scholars Program, which aims to increase
diversity within the agency’s intramural
research program. A majority of the 28 sci-
entists hired in the first two classes of that
effort are women, says Hannah Valantine,
NIH’s chief diversity officer. Together,
black and Hispanic scientists comprise
half of the total, she adds.
NIH will not require universities to hire
only scientists from underrepresented
groups, Valantine says, noting that would
be illegal and run counter to NIH’s goal of
funding top talent. But NIH hopes each of
the 120 FIRST hires would already have
worked to change a campus culture that
can isolate such scientists.
Too often, Valantine says, those scien-
tists arrive on campus and find “they are
the only one” in their department. “That
is quite disconcerting and causes a lot
of anxiety,” she notes. “The idea behind
FIRST is to create a climate in which they
can succeed.”
FIRST takes a three-pronged approach
to creating that climate. The biggest por-
tion of the grant will supplement a new
faculty member’s startup package from the
university for 3 years, giving them time to
collect the preliminary data needed to win
an R01 award, NIH’s standard grant. Somestill awaiting their first NIH grant at that
point may be eligible for additional bridge
funding, Valantine adds.
The FIRST grant will also support activi-
ties designed to help new faculty advance
their careers, such as one-on-one mentor-
ing and networking opportunities. Finally,
FIRST will fund campuswide programs
that promote diversity and inclusion.
There’s little empirical evidence on
whether cluster hiring enhances diversity.
But Carla Freeman, senior associate deanof faculty at Emory University, says it has
helped Emory’s college of arts and sciences
triple the number of new faculty from under-
represented groups in the past 3 years.
In Emory’s most recent cluster hire, ap-
plicants were asked to describe how they
have fostered diversity. The answers, Free-
man says, determined who got a closer
look. She says the exceptional talent among
the thousand applicants convinced school
administrators to hire six people, double
the original target. All were from under-
represented groups.
The NIH initiative won’t begin to cover
a university’s investment in the cluster
hires. Startup costs can reach $3 millionfor a new faculty member with a wet lab at
a medical school, notes Valantine, a cardio-
logy researcher, and Freeman adds that
scientists from underrepresented groups
usually command a premium salary. “We
expect the institution to provide the bulk
of support,” Valantine says. “But we want
to have some skin in the game.”
Although NIH’s Council of Coun-
cils unanimously endorsed FIRST at its
24 January meeting, members raised sev-
eral concerns. Some members worried that
institutions with fewer resources, includ-
ing limited lab space, will be at a disadvan-
tage. “There are relatively few institutions
that would be able to do this,” said Jean
Schaffer, a senior investigator at Harvard
Medical School. Council members sug-
gested NIH could level the playing field by
allowing several institutions to collaborate
on a single proposal and reducing the min-
imum size of a cluster hire.
Valantine says she is open to the idea of
such partnerships among what she calls
“underresourced institutions.” NIH might
also be OK with hiring clusters of as small
as five or six faculty, she added.
Some council members also fretted that
there isn’t enough talent to choose from, and
that institutions can’t accommodate such
growth. But Valantine rejected those notions.
“It’s a myth that the pool doesn’t exist,”
she said flatly. She also cited data from the
Association of American Medical Colleges
showing that, on average, their institutions
typically hire “40 to 50” faculty members a
year. Even so, she added, “We need to push
them ... to ensure that they use their hiring
to enhance diversity.”
NIH officials hope FIRST will also be-
come a model for the large number of
institutions with NIH-funded training pro-
grams. “This will make our current invest-
ment in training pay off in a way that it
hasn’t,” says Walter Koroshetz, director of
NIH’s National Institute of Neurological
Diseases and Stroke.
FIRST is a pilot program, and Valantine
says NIH welcomes variations on its con-
cept of cluster hiring. She says NIH is ag-
nostic about whether institutions with a
track record of diversity hires should fare
better in the competition than those with
few minority faculty members who sub-
mit an innovative approach to correcting
the problem. jBy Jeffrey MervisSCIENTIFIC WORKFORCENIH hopes ‘cluster hiring’ will improve diversity
Hiring faculty in batches could help erase racial gap in NIH awards
“The idea behind FIRST
is to create a climate in which
they can succeed.”
Hannah Valantine, National Institutes of HealthPublished by AAAS