The University of Michigan and the National Institutes of Health will jointly invest $79 million to support and recruit 30 new faculty members to the Ann Arbor campus as part of a nationwide effort to enhance inclusion and equity across the biomedical and health sciences community.
U-M will launch the Michigan Program for Advancing Cultural Transformation with a five-year, $15.8 million grant awarded this week from NIH, along with a $63.7 million university investment.
The program will be led by Robert Sellers, the Charles D. Moody Collegiate Professor of Psychology and professor of psychology in LSA and professor of education in the Marsal Family School of Education; and Reshma Jagsi, an adjunct professor of radiation oncology in the Medical School.
M-PACT builds upon the LSA Collegiate Fellowship Program, designed in 2016 by the National Center for Institutional Diversity to bolster U-M’s diverse academic environment by hiring tenure-track faculty with a demonstrated commitment to equity and inclusion.
That program was led at the time by Tabbye Chavous, professor of psychology in LSA and professor of education in the Marsal Family School of Education, and now U-M’s vice provost for equity and inclusion and chief diversity officer.
Administered by the Office of the Vice President for Research, in partnership with the Office of the Provost, M-PACT will recruit 30 new tenure-track assistant professors across 11 schools, colleges and units into three interdisciplinary research clusters: social and behavioral research, basic biomedical research and clinical-translational research.
To address persistent and significant underrepresentation of minoritized individuals and groups in the biomedical and health sciences, M-PACT will employ evidence-based recruitment processes to generate candidate pools with diverse social and disciplinary identities.
Recruitment efforts will begin this fall, and all new M-PACT scholars will have primary appointments in U-M schools and colleges.
