An Exploratory Ecosystems Analysis of Biomedical Graduate Student Training Reveals the Need for Support for Graduate Program Managers

Recent attention to graduate student mental health, changing career landscapes, the individual financial burden of graduate school and postdoctoral pathways, and continued challenges to diversify academic training signal that the time is ripe for reimagining the vision, design, and implementation of biomedical research education and training in the United States. We sought to assess biomedical graduate student needs and how they arose within the context of a large midwestern institution’s school of medicine. We did this by conducting semi-structured focus groups of biomedical graduate students at our institution. We then employed an ecosystems theoretical framework and situational analysis to analyze focus group data using NVivo software. Our results identify seven distinct categories of unmet graduate student needs, ranging from community building to the establishment of equitable, clear and transparent policies. We further elaborate on the complex relationship between these needs, and the various ecosystem levels impacting them. Our results highlight the important role that relationships, such as those with graduate program managers and various affinity, peer and professional communities, play for graduate students. We therefore conclude that greater support, including administrative, fiscal, and coordination for those who are supporting graduate students, as well as intentional and evidence-based programming centering on graduate student needs and voices is warranted to develop training that will produce the next generation of biomedical leaders and professionals.