Remember when the top priority of the academic science community was the study of science? Good times, good times.

Timothy Dionisopoulos of Campus Reform reports.

Feds give Duke $1.8M to increase diversity of its scientists

Duke University has received $1.8 million from the federal government in order to increase “diversity” in its ranks of student scientists and researchers.

The federal funding will come from the coffers of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), over the next five years, according to the Duke Chronicle.

The money will go to support the mission of the Duke BioCoRE, program, which is in part to teach bio-students from a variety of backgrounds.

“Duke BioCoRE program is committed to increasing every aspect of diversity within Duke’s bioscience community,” reads the description on the program’s official website.

Dan Janes, a staff member at the NIGMS who helped Duke receive the funding for BioCoRE, told Campus Reform the program’s goal is to help diverse populations acquire their doctorates in the sciences.

“In order to maintain a strong science agenda for the nation we try to diversify the scientific workforce on the underlying principle that a more diverse workforce will generate better science,” he said.

Janes told Campus Reform the lack of diversity in the sciences is due to an older workforce which did not invest the necessary funds for this type of program.

“There are a few different reasons for that [lack of diversity],” he said. “One of them is that the scientific workforce is made up of employees that were hired a long time ago so we have an aging workforce.”


 
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