DUPRI is pleased to announce a recent NICHD R25 award (1R25HD105602) to a consortium of several population research centers, including the Duke Population Research Center, to fund NextGenPop (Recruiting the Next Generation of Scholars into Population Research). This program will use the pressing growth of inequality as a lens for studying population composition and change, with the goal of increasing the pipeline of undergraduates from underrepresented backgrounds into the population sciences. It has three specific aims: 1) to introduce advanced undergraduate students from underrepresented backgrounds to foundational demographic concepts and tools; 2) to integrate students’ training in research and professional development; 3) to foster ongoing engagement of program participants in population research and allied fields.
These specific aims will be met through an intensive nine-day summer residential program rotating across five institutions over five years and an infrastructure for ongoing engagement of program participants. Participating institutions include Wisconsin and Cornell (co-leaders), Duke, UC-Irvine, and Minnesota. Duke will host the program during the third year of the grant. The program will be governed by a strong central coordinating core and share a common curriculum. Unique signature themes each summer will leverage key research strengths of individual population centers.
M. Giovanna Merli (Sanford School of Public Policy, PPS) is the Duke main investigator, collaborating with co-investigators Tyson Brown (Sociology), Scott Lynch (Sociology), James Moody (Sociology), Jay Pearson (Sanford PPS) and Marcos Rangel (Sanford PPS). The DUPRI team has joined forces with a regional team of investigators at North Carolina Central University College of Health and Sciences, Johns Hopkins University Hopkins Population Center and Morgan State University to provide expertise on social networks, health inequalities and migration and ensure a pool of qualified advanced undergraduates to participate in the program.
The Duke Social Science Research Institute, the Duke Graduate School and the Sanford School of Public Policy will provide additional support for the NextGenPop program during the year it will be hosted at Duke.