2008 Porter Physiology Development Committee Report

The goal of the Porter Physiology Development Program is to encourage diversity among students pursuing full-time studies toward the PhD (or DSc) in the physiological sciences and to encourage their participation in the American Physiological Society.

The program provides one to two year full-time graduate fellowships. The program is open to underrepresented ethnic minority applicants who are citizens or permanent residents of the United States or its territories. Since 1967 the program has provided support to 109 trainees.

In 2007-2008, the program provided funding for five fellows: Antino R. Allen, Indiana Univ.; Dolores F. Doane, Univ. of Illinois; Zelieann Rivera, Univ. of Arizona; Brandi A. Thompson, Univ. of Michigan; and Lizette Warner, Mayo Clinic.

The number of new applications received for Porter Fellowships continues to increase. A total of 18 new and three renewal applications were submitted. The stipend paid to the Porter Fellows for 2008-2009 will be $20,772, consistent with the NIH scale. This allowed the Porter Fund to present a total of eight awards for the 2008-2009 Program.

In 2007, the APS Council approved several enhancements to improve the Porter Physiology Fellowships. The goal of these enhancements is to increase the overall impact of the fellowship on the student’s career and their long-term interactions with the APS. These enhancements are being implemented for the first time with 2008-2009 Porter Fellows. Each Fellow will complete an entry and exit survey to provide better formative feedback and information on short term program impacts; staff will send an individual press release for each fellow to their hometown paper and institutional press office to provide additional visibility of the program and the fellows; each Fellow will be expected to do the following professional development activities in order to successfully complete their fellowship: submit an abstract to EB, attend EB, attend an APS professional skills training (PST) live workshop or online course or complete a comparable course, and participate in at least one APS outreach opportunity during their two-year fellowship period.

This program is designed to encourage highly qualified underrepresented minority students to pursue professional careers in physiological/biomedical sciences. Since its inception in 1987, the APS-NIDDK Minority Travel Fellowship Program has awarded 665 travel fellowships to 470 under-graduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students and to faculty members at minority institutions. In addition to travel support, the program provides meeting mentors, an EB orientation session, the Porter Reception, a networking breakfast, and a luncheon honoring the travel fellows.

Five travel fellows received funding to attend the summer APS conference in 2007. In January 2008, the Committee selected 53 travel fellows to attend EB 2008 in San Diego, CA. Travel fellows received funding to attend the APS Intersociety Meeting, “The Integrative Biology of Exercise V.”

As in the past, the Committee has held a reception for Travel Fellows, their meeting mentors, and past and current Porter and Travel Fellows. This was initiated with the goal of building stronger connections between minority students and the larger community of APS scientists, especially other minority scientists. The Porter reception again this year was extremely successful. A number of Council members, including the APS President, Hannah Carey, past Presidents Dale Benos and Doug Eaton, and incoming President, Irving Zucker, were on hand to meet the students and welcome them to the meeting.

The APS, along with more than 280 graduate institutions, government agencies, foundations and professional associations, exhibited at the 2007 meeting in Austin, TX, promoting graduate study in physiology and the APS programs for minority students. The APS provided $2,000 for cash awards for the most outstanding undergraduate presentations in physiology research.

The APS K-12 Minority Outreach Fellowship, launched in 2006, seeks to foster communication between minority graduate and postdoctoral students and middle/high school minority life sciences students. The program capitalizes on the relationships that the NIDDK Minority Travel Fellows Program and Porter Physiology Fellowship program builds with minority graduate and postdoctoral students and the relationships that the Frontiers in Physiology program builds with minority middle/high school teachers. In its second year, the program supported two fellows, Jessica Clark,Washington Univ. School of Medicine and Clintoria Richards-Williams, Univ. of Alabama, Birmingham.

The Committee hopes to play a more active role in monitoring the participation of minority physiologists and trainees in Society governance and activities and to promote participation where possible.