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Motivating Young Investigators to Pursue Cancer Research Careers and Training

University of Louisville Cancer Education Program (CEP), funded by a National Cancer Institute (NCI) grant, seeks to educate, and motivate undergraduate and professional students to pursue further training and future careers in cancer research. Over the past 4 years, 121 participants completed the program, including 42% females, 16% African‐Americans, 12% Asians, 2.4% Hispanic/Latino, 2.4% Indian, and 2.4% mixed. All trainees formulated a cancer research project in collaboration with their faculty mentor engaged in cancer research at the Brown Cancer Center. Laboratory research training/mentoring was supplemented with cancer‐related seminars and professional development activities. A blinded survey was used to assess participants’ perspective on program components. Participants ranked the programmatic activities as “poor”, “could be better”, “neutral”, “good”, and “excellent”. Over the past four years, there was a significant improvement in the participants’ interest in cancer research after completing the program (P < 0.0001). The interest level in cancer research improved, remained the same, or decreased among 46.5%, 45.4%, and 8.2%, respectively. A majority of the students perceived the overall program experience (86.4%), quality of the faculty mentor (88.5%), helpfulness of lab mentor (86.3%), and quality of the professional development activities (84.4%) as “good to excellent”. R25 alumni have presented their research at national/international scientific meetings (n = 22), published their research in scholarly journals, and continue their cancer research/oncology training at various post‐graduate degree programs/institutions (n = 32). UofL's Cancer Education Program is well poised to produce the next generation of cancer researchers.