Diversity Hub

UC San Francisco is one of 22 universities with Institutional Research and Career Development Award (IRACDA) programs funded by NIH/NIGMS. IRACDA Scholars receive mentored research and teaching training at major research institutions partnered with a teaching-intensive institution with a demonstrated commitment to outreach. UCSF's partner is San Francisco State University.

The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) Training Program offers a summer clinical research training program for up to 15-20 undergraduate students, who are planning to attend dental, medical, nursing, pharmacy or physical therapy professional schools after graduation, and who have an interest in a career in clinical research. Students will be paired with a UCSF professional student who is enrolled in the Designing Clinical Research (DCR) course. The purpose of the course is to train students to evaluate the medical literature, to design clinical and translational research studies, and to encourage long-term collaborations between UCSF and undergraduate students.

Promoting Underrepresented Minorities Advancing in the Sciences (PUMAS) is a paid biomedical research internship program funded by an NIH/NHLBI grant. PUMAS aims to identify community college students from disadvantaged background who currently live in the Bay Area. During the program, PUMAS interns are paired with a scientific mentor and work on an individual research project in one of our laboratories. PUMAS interns work part-time (20–25 hours per week) over the course of 8-weeks and participate in a final poster session where they present their research findings to the scientific community here at Gladstone and UCSF.

PRIME hosts 4-5 health pipeline organizations to come and visit the UCSF campus during the summer. We have current partners that we invite, Mentoring in Medicine and Science, Huckleberry Youth Wellness Academy, San Francisco State Summer Science Institute, FACES for the Future. PRIME students work with the coordinators of the pipeline programs to develop a site visit that is in line with the interests of their programs. Some typical activities include a tour, a medical student panel, specimen/organ hands-on activity. Each program visits UCSF once for about 3 hours.

The Innovators in Young Women's Health Program (Innovators) is a 10-month health and leadership training program which empowers young women to create a project that uniquely addresses young women's health needs specific to their school community. Innovators are hired by the UCSF National Center of Excellence in Women's Health. Innovators is based on a positive youth development approach that emphasizes each girl's strengths and / assets. Working in teams, students develop a project for their school and implement it with the assistance of an adult ally in the school (wellness center staff, nurse, teacher, etc.). Innovators concludes in May with a celebration during which each team presents their projects.

The Youth Steering Committee (YSC) is a young women's health and leadership program for a group of diverse high school girls from SF public and charter schools. The YSC works together for 9 months to explore young women's health issues and to create a health & leadership summit for other high school girls. The YSC is based on a positive youth development philosophy which emphasizes the strengths and assets of young women and encourages them to see themselves as leaders among their peers, within their schools, and throughout their community. The YSC is designed to be a safe place where young women can come together to share their thoughts and ideas, develop self-confidence, and build leadership skills.

The mission of DIVA is to create a welcoming, inclusive, and respectful community for students, faculty, and staff in the School of Nursing. DIVA embraces the "big umbrella" of diversity to include human diversity in its many forms: gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, physical ability, socioeconomic status, age, and spiritual and political beliefs, among others. To this end, DIVA focuses on addressing issues related to bias, stereotyping, prejudicial attitudes, and exclusionary practices in order to create a welcoming environment with a particular focus on underrepresented faculty, students, and staff.

The Summer Research Program provides research opportunities in the biomedical and biological sciences. Students selected for summer research at UC San Francisco spend up to ten weeks working with UCSF faculty members on research projects. Participants in the program take part in seminars, lectures, and social events, creating a cohesive and supportive community. At the end of the program, students give presentations of their research and get valuable feedback from students, postdocs, and faculty at UCSF. Students are supported in these programs by funds from the AMGEN Scholars Program, the National Science Foundation, Genentech, the University of California Office of the President, and UCSF Graduate Division.

he National Institute for General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) Initiative for Maximizing Student Development (IMSD) Fellows and Affiliates Program at UCSF is designed to support historically underrepresented and marginalized PhD students in basic science graduates programs. UCSF’s first IMSD grant was awarded in 1997, which supports selected students in the first two years of their graduate studies. To date, over 100 students have benefited from an IMSD Fellows and Affiliates Program at UCSF.