OVERALL SUMMARY/ABSTRACT The National Institutes of Health (NIH) have indicated a clear commitment to diversifying the national biomedical workforce. Yet, the recruitment, advancement, and retention of historically disadvantaged and underrepresented minority (URM) faculty remains a significant problem within academia. The NIH Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation (FIRST) initiative aims to transform institutional culture by developing communities of biomedical researchers and supporting institutions that are committed to increasing diversity and inclusive excellence. The University of New Mexico (UNM) is a Hispanic Serving Institution, and a Carnegie Very High Research Activity institution. Thus, recruitment and retention of a diverse biomedical faculty workforce at UNM will align with the NIH mission and will promote inclusive excellence in a majority-minority state where diverse faculty representation will offer role models for female and URM trainees. Research suggests that systemic transformation of institutional culture requires the recruitment and retention of diverse faculty through evidence-based practices, as well as the education of all faculty and adminstrators in diversity, equity, and inclusion. The proposed UNM FIRST program will hire nine early career faculty across six departments in the UNM College of Arts and Sciences. The cohort will consist of two interdisciplinary clusters: neuroscience and data science. The central hypothesis is that this faculty cohort model will successfully hire and retain a diverse cohort of early career faculty and the changes implemented as part of the UNM FIRST program will support the enhancement of inclusive excellence practices across UNM. The long-term goal of the UNM FIRST program is to increase the diversity of the biomedical faculty workforce at NIH while building on recent progress toward inclusive excellence in our institutional culture. Our specific aims are: To recruit, promote, and retain a diverse cohort of biomedical faculty (AIM 1); and to systemically transform UNM institutional culture towards inclusive excellence (AIM 2). The UNM FIRST Leadership Team includes five female leaders at UNM with significant experience in NIH-funded research, faculty development, faculty hiring and promotion, and institutional policymaking. The UNM Leadership, including a new Institutional Innovation Implementation Board (I3 Board; the Senior Vice Provost, Vice President for Research, Associate Provost for Faculty Success, College of Arts & Sciences Dean, and the ADVANCE Director) that will be created to support the UNM FIRST program, will be poised to work closely with the UNM FIRST Leadership Team in its commitment to enhance diversity and inclusive excellence at UNM. The significance of the proposed UNM FIRST program is that a diverse cohort of NIH-funded biomedical faculty devoted to inclusive excellence will achieve success as faculty in the UNM College of Arts and Sciences, that UNM will become an institution where inclusive excellence is permanently established, and that UNM faculty, including UNM FIRST faculty, will train the next generation of diverse NIH-funded scientists.

Project Narrative The University of New Mexico (UNM) FIRST program will hire a diverse cohort of early career faculty in the areas of neuroscience and data science and transform UNM’s institutional culture towards sustained inclusive excellence. The recruitment, promotion, and retention of the UNM FIRST faculty cohort will diversify the biomedical faculty workforce at UNM where diverse faculty representation will offer role models for female and underrepresented minority (URM) trainees who will be the next generation of URM NIH-funded scientists. Through the ongoing efforts of the UNM leadership and UNM institutional commitments, the UNM FIRST program will also systemically transform the UNM culture towards inclusive excellence in a Hispanic Serving Institution that is also a Carnegie Very High Research Activity institution located within a majority-minority state.