"The Iowa Biosciences Academy is essentially a community of smart, helpful, cool people, and being a part of the program was one of the most fun AND most useful parts of my entire undergraduate career."
—Rikki Laser (BS neuroscience '20)

Testimonials like the one above are music to the ears of Dr. Lori Adams, associate professor of instruction in the University of Iowa Department of Biology and program director/co-principal investigator of the Iowa Biosciences Academy (IBA).

Rikki Laser's academic success is proof not only of Laser's hard work and intelligence, but also of the benefits of having an organized structure for exploring and conducting research as an undergraduate. IBA, housed in Biology, offered Laser the opportunity to learn what it means to be a top-notch scientific researcher, and to actually conduct groundbreaking research with a renowned neuroscientist at the vanguard of the field. She worked with Mark Blumberg, F. Wendell Miller Professor and chair of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, studying the primary somatosensory cortex, or the part of the brain that processes touch.

Laser graduated with distinction in the neuroscience major from Iowa and is now a student in the Behavioral and Evolutionary Neuroscience area of the Psychology PhD program at Cornell University. In the spring of 2021, she was named a recipient of the National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship, a prestigious honor that provides Laser with three years of financial support for her doctoral education, including an annual stipend.

Adams said that Laser's experience in IBA is exactly what the program shoots for—providing a sense of belonging as well as academic support. 

"We work really hard to develop a small-group, community feeling," Adams said. "We want the students to feel confident and say, 'I’m a researcher, and I found my sense of community here.'"

Since its start in 1999 (Adams joined in 2011), with grant funding from the National Institutes of Health Initiative for Maximizing Student Development (IMSD), 157 students have completed the IBA program. At any given time, IBA has 18 students from a diverse set of majors ranging from College of Liberal Arts and Sciences disciplines such as physics, chemistry, psychology, neuroscience, human health and physiology, mathematics, environmental science, and biology to other UI programs such as nursing, public health, biomedical engineering, and chemical engineering. These students have disparate academic and career goals, but through IBA, they develop one thing in common: a passion for research and a supprtive community.

Learn more about Dr. Lori Adams in our Meet the Researcher profile.

The program starts for the students with an introductory course developed and taught by Adams called "Ways of Knowing Science," which helps them understand how research can fit into one's goals and interests. Working one-on-one with career mentors, the students determine the faculty lab where they want to work, and if hired by the researcher, they begin a paid student job as an undergraduate research assistant. The students are paid for their work not through the researcher's grant funding, but directly by IBA. In 2021, the funding for IBA shifted from its original NIH grant, as the IMSD program is being phased out and replaced by the Maximizing Access to Research Careers (MARC) program. In addition, IBA receives generous and essential institutional financial support from a number of UI units, including CLAS, the Graduate College, the Office of the Vice President for Research, and the Office of the Provost.

The goal of the NIH MARC program is to develop a diverse pool of undergraduates who complete their baccalaureate degree and transition into and complete biomedical, research-focused higher degree programs. IBA is a safe investment for the NIH. A recent demographic five-year snapshot shows the racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity of IBA. Forty-two percent of IBA students identified as Hispanic or Latinx, 33% as White, 9% as African American or Black, 6% as Asian, 3% as Alaskan Native or American Indian, and 3% as two or more underrepresented racial minority (URM) groups. Among all participants, 67% are from a disadvantaged background (i.e., from two or more of the following categories: rural, Pell Grant-eligible, first-generation college student), and 10% report having a disability.

IBA benefits the university as well as the student researchers. For instance, data show a positive impact on graduation rates of underrepresented UI students. In the past 15 years, 93% of IBA students completed BA or BS degrees in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) fields. Among a comparison cohort of more than 4,000 UI students who were not involved in IBA, only 42% of URM students who started at Iowa in a STEM major received their BA or BS degree during the period examined. The time it took IBA participants to earn their degree was shorter as well. Time-to-degree for IBA participants was 4.18 years, compared to 4.35 years for URM students in the comparison cohort and 4.29 years for non-URM students in the cohort. In addition, the fact that students are paid by IBA has the effect of providing high-quality research assistants at no cost to their faculty research mentors. 

The UI is also part of a related initiative called the UI Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (UI LSAMP) Program, which provides similar research opportunities (mentored research experience, professional development, and financial support) for underrepresented students who transfer from a community college to the UI with an interest in a future career in STEM. UI LSAMP—an alliance with Iowa State University, the University of Northern Iowa, and other four-year and community colleges in Iowa, Illinois, and Nebraska—serves students who transfer into the UI from community colleges. UI LSAMP's campus director is Vincent Rodgers, professor of physics and anatomy, who until recently was also co-PI for IBA (Tori Forbes, associate professor of chemistry, replaced Rodgers as co-PI of IBA).

Adams, who was Rodgers's co-campus director of UI LSAMPS before stepping aside from that position, has yet another key role in fostering undergraduate research: she is executive director of the Latham Science Engagement Fellowship Program, a project generously funded by Drs. Robert J. and Sue B. Latham of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The Latham initiative focuses on recruiting high-achieving STEM students from across the UI and teaching them the art of communicating science to the public through innovative outreach and engagement programs. Laser was a Latham Fellow at Iowa.

Of course, when counting on excellent faculty and staff mentors to realize the goals of IBA, UI LSAMP, and other mentored-research programs, Adams and her colleagues (Brinda Shetty is associate director of IBA, UI LSAMP, and the Latham Fellowship Program) must ensure that UI faculty and staff researchers are skilled at working directly with students on their academic, career, and personal goals, and shepherding them toward success. Accordingly, IBA spearheaded the Iowa Mentoring Academy, which offers mentor training three times a year. The academy is now housed in the UI Institute for Clinical and Translational Science.

Adams, who is a Master Facilitator for the National Research Mentoring Network at the National Institutes of Health, is the Iowa Mentoring Academy's associate director. Andrew Kitchen, associate professor of anthropology, completed the academy's training, and recommended it for other faculty for whom mentoring is key to their work.

"Most of us are never formally taught how to mentor students or junior colleagues," Kitchen said. "The assumption is that since you have been successful so far, you must know what good and bad mentoring looks like. But that isn’t true. Because of this, we have only our personal experiences to build on, and that is far too little for me to address the diverse backgrounds and needs of my mentees. For this reason, I am constantly trying to improve my mentoring by picking up techniques and insights from others, so when I heard that this training was available, I jumped at the opportunity. Dr. Adams and her co-instructors are fantastic, and the workshop will change how you approach mentoring—for the better.  When you are done with the training, mentoring won’t seem like an onerous task but will become a pleasant, forever ongoing part of your academic career."

So the evidence is in: IBA, and its sister programs such as UI LSAMP, the Latham Science Engagement Fellowship Program, and the Iowa Mentoring Academy work as intended. They spark a passion for research by undergraduates, and foster rewarding relationships between faculty mentors and their mentees. As a result, groundbreaking science involving undergraduates is happening across campus, and students get a leg up in the competition for graduate school and jobs.

Perhaps most important, though, is the sense of community that Laser and Adams evoke. To Adams, it's essential to IBA's success, and she cherishes the relationships she's built over the years with IBA students and alumni.

"I get to know students well. I get to watch students mature over four years, watch them develop as scientists," Adams said. "At first, everyone is nervous, they're not sure what they want to do, and then over the course of their time in IBA, they develop confidence. Every student is different, but at some point they all hit a barrier—and then they come out of it. I’ve seen it enough to know they will get past it, it’s going to be okay. And the IBA community is going to be there to help them."

—by Nic Arp