 This is the first time that I haven't been tripped up by the recording, so I'm proud of myself. If nobody else is proud of me today. Lastly, we want to emphasize that this discussion and most discussions facilitated by Reckon Graduate School, follow the IGR community guidelines. So what we want to do is ensure that this remains a supportive and respectful space for participants to learn, grow and share their vulnerabilities. Let's all be mindful of the intent of potential impact our words may have on others as we discussed our thoughts in this particular this space here today. So we got the house keeping it out of way we we will move on to the star of the show. So today we have Dr Dean Amir Strow, who serves as a faculty on the faculty at both Fisk University, I have my fist colors on today as I have my fist holds a special place in my heart, and also she serves in the faculty at Vanderbilt University, but she's the executive director of the fist Vanderbilt Masters to PhD bridge program she's been there since 2012. She's been a huge advocate for students and mentors and students from underrepresented underserved groups into and through STEM PhD programs. She's been serving as the director of the L Sam regional Center for excellence and broadened participation in 2018. She does many more things like directs the educational research center for the fist Vanderbilt Bridge Program in collaboration with the Peabody School of Education at Vanderbilt, and the Institute for Research. She is a friend of the room as she tends to respond when I reach out to her and does nice things for us, and in part her wisdom from her experiences at Fisk and Vanderbilt. So she may be familiar to some but new to others but I would like to welcome Dr Dean Amir Strow here this afternoon so we can give a quick round of applause. I'm going to use the emoji functions to welcome here this afternoon that would be wonderful. And with that we'll turn it over to you. Dr my straw. There we go. Okay, because I've got us to make my thumbnails very small so I can't really see all of you so if I do need to stop for any reason if there's a question or something that I need to pause for somebody just tell me because I've got you all I've got you all hidden. So I am very glad to be here today to talk to you about the Fisk Vanderbilt Masters to PhD Bridge Program and some lessons we have learned to help us generate what we feel is a real model for inclusive graduate education. And so I'll also probably refer to this as the FED sometimes or just the bridge. Okay, so what's the bridge program, the mission of the bridge program, it was created in 2004 to increase underrepresented minorities in STEM workforce and Academy. And the rationale was that more underrepresented minority students use the masters as a stepping stone to the PhD. The program itself is a fully funded masters at this either biology chemistry or physics, and within physics we have astronomy and material science tracks. So the students that attempt to bridge to Vanderbilt, or another PhD granting institution, they are not required to apply to Vanderbilt they are not guaranteed to get in we have them apply to a range of institutions that are appropriate and fitting for their goals. And so then the full program is seven to eight years so while the financial component, you know is two years in the beginning and one year at the PhD if they matriculate Vanderbilt we consider our students active bridge students no matter what institution that they are in. And we provide this additional layer of mentoring and support as they're completing their degree and moving into their jobs. And so small gains and absolute numbers can have a big proportional impact on a national scale. And this is particularly true in physics and astronomy, which is where the bridge programs began. So just looking at the survey of earned doctorates in 2019. You can see in the physics PhDs that were awarded. Only 1% went to black or African American students of US citizens and permanent residents that earned PhDs. And for astronomy in 2019, it was zero. And so there are some data that indicates from between like 2013 the 2017, there were 24 PhDs in physics and asked her to went to black or African American students, and almost half of those students came through the bridge program. So we have a real outsized impact on this field in particular. You know, one program when schools are only having very few every few years can make or can make a significant difference. And just real quick just to say again, obviously, this. This was part of the reason that, you know, that we are created in 2004 and unfortunately here we are and we're still in the situation so there's a lot of work to be done. So where is the bridge program so okay so Fisk is historically black college university Vanderbilt is a massive R one, and we are two miles apart I think that two miles has shrunk because Vanderbilt keeps just stretching out. And so the two mile, you know the geographic location that makes it very easy to get in between the institution which is really important because the students are taking classes at both campuses. Some of their research is at Vanderbilt some of their research is at Fisk, we share resources and terms of scientific equipment and core labs. And there's a lot of interaction. There's a lot of opportunity for interaction between the faculty at Fisk and at Vanderbilt and then also at the students that are in the PhD and then the masters. So this is a little bit of an old slide. So our basic student demographics though about the 150 students we've admitted so far it's 59% African American 24% Hispanic or Latinx. Native American Native white and Pacific Islander 14% white or other non represent underrepresented minority, and we're about 51% 49% male actually I think that might be a little bit more like 54% female right now, following the trends of more women graduated and rolling. But I would say, even though we don't formally track it that about 90 to 95% of our students are from underserved populations so you know first generation students or low income students or have physical or learning disabilities right. So the program itself has these four core tenants so this was created in the beginning when the program was founded along with Columbia University Center for institutional and social change. The first being building research based partnerships this is joint research as an engine of institutional collaboration. And this is also recognizing the notion that the most seamless sort of transitions for students potentially between MSI and PWIs is between faculty collaborations right. Or even just faculty relationships where there's a lot of actual in shaking between the two places where there's a real mutually beneficial relationship that then can sort of exist independently of the program. So the second is identifying students, you know really increasing the talent pool. So these are folks that, you know, it says diamonds in the rough but what it means is that they may not look like what a traditional metrics would recognize as a solid PhD candidates, but they have what it takes and and moreover, for us it, we want to be able to serve. So one of the first things that we look at when we're looking at students is how can we serve the student, you know, do we have the research do we have the training. And is this someone that we have the right resources to nurture their potential. That's very important for us. So then there's also the continually monitoring to the second derivative right so not waiting for there to be a change in the in the trend but to actually, you know, detect inflection points, and to intervene with support early. So this is a very proactive approach, and it's a real wraparound mentoring structure. And then finally, we want to leverage professional networks. So identifying students with the broader community for mentorship and research opportunities, and then also really providing stage specific professional development across the board so intensively sort of in the master space but keeping that up as we go along with different stage specific opportunities and and align alignment of resources that are going to help people get to where they want to be and to get to that job so it's really important for us that they have internal and external networks. So some of the program outcomes there's been 120 master's degrees awarded 94% of students earn master's applied and went on to PhD. We've got 41 PhD graduates now which is just great. And when I started there were three. And so we've got a 10 year completion rate of 88% the students actually earn about twice as many fellowships and publish equally to their counterparts. We compare them to Vanderbilt PhD students and we've had eight career awards associated with bridge program for junior faculty. Okay, so but today I was just going to, I'm going to focus mainly on community building, and then some of the research that we've been doing around our mentoring community building around our practices that students have said are associated with success. So, so we're going to talk a lot about the sense of belonging of the bridge family, including like solidifying our cohort, our, our professional development course, social activities and then also our, our research day. So, but it all starts with the bridge family and the notion of it being a bridge family and so in all of our recruitment materials and in all of our conversations, we center the students, and we, we want to set this tone of it being a family from the time that they are admitted. We try to have a welcoming committee to, to get them to get them started, you know, we, we take these pictures right off the bat, you know, there, there's, there's just a genuine sort of feeling and expression of this, of this notion of, of the bridge family and what it means to be a part of that. And so that really starts on the very first day at orientation. And there's also a level of transparency that I think helps us build that idea of family right. So we actually explained the whole model to them why we need it, what the rationale was how it's paid for right. And, and all the people that have come before them and the network that we are building, and how they are part of something that's so much larger than themselves, and that they are going to be a part of this of this family of this community for as long as they want to be a part of it. And really, you know, they've got to sort of disown us, because we just want to, we really want to stay with our people. And we spoke focus a lot on the expectations know what they can expect from us. And of course what the actual expectations are for them for research for coursework from engagement. And we talk about the things that are going to go wrong, we talk about the fact that there are going to be bureaucratic problems, there are going to be logistical snafus. We are going to make mistakes as people, and we want to be able to be honest with them and to have this be a collaboration and a partnership. And, and to engage them in the actual process of, of the program so in fact they will go on to be representatives on our steering committee right so we engage them as part of the leadership as well. So following orientation but before classes start, we have a few weeks where we get to do boot camp. So there's two different ones there's one for biology and chemistry and one for physics and astronomy bio and camp focuses on things like lab safety finding primary literature maybe bio statistics. And then astronomy and physics is very much focused on the math review and computational skills. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of things that are peppered into that so yes it's academic right, but we buy their lunches all week, because they don't get paid until two weeks after they start so they've just moved here they've made this financial investment so we try to support them with having some with having lunches every day for those couple weeks, some dinners, some social events that are just for them so that they can get to know each other. We have a few things such as meeting the directors having Q&A sessions with the with the executive pressure assistant director. So there's a chance for them to ask questions and to get just feel comfortable. And this year we're going to start a new pilot program actually where we're going to have a mental health professional. Come and talk to them two or three times about some basics of care of mental health and self care and finding doctors. So they can feel like they can get on a solid footing with their mental health and then that same professional is going to be offering a wellness short course during the semester and so to be able to sort of amp that voluntary participation. We're hoping to introduce that during, during boot camp. So the primary function that is really to build shared experiences and to give them time to get to know each other because the more the cohort gels by far the better off that that it goes both just personally academically having that support for each other. And so for us to be taking the time to build that support and providing the space for that to come is really important. So then even though they're in different tracks, and they're in multiple different labs, and, and very few of them are even on similar projects to be honest so they're very spread out. They do keep some courses together which is good but the only one that they're going to be all being is the professional development year long courses is just a once a week, half a credits, but the, they're all there. And so in the first semester, we start off with really diving in diving in pretty deep actually on things like imposter phenomenon stereotype threat, and you know the myth of meritocracy and the reality of discrimination in stem and in stem higher education in particular. Right. So and also doing things like values affirmations but but being very honest about the fact that, especially as they're moving between, you know, an HBCU and a PWI, what is that, what is that like, and what sort of discriminatory activities or sort of exclusive attitudes they're, they're going to potentially experience. It's also a time for them to connect with their advisor and to really understand their projects that's good it gives them this good grounding. It helps to, you know, build a relationship with their advisor early on. And then the second semester is very much focused on writing and preparation for that PhD application and also research ethics. And then we've really built a lot of camaraderie between the students. And so it can be a really productive, you know, the sessions are a very productive time. And I think one of the things that's important for this, that again brings in this notion of, of community is that it's a student driven structure so every semester the students review the entire syllabus with me. And then we discuss whether or not things are in the right place or whether or not they're even the right things. And we make adjustments every year based on how the students felt that they were having their sort of professional development needs met at the right times by what we were offering. And that's been really helpful to make the course be something that was a very passive sort of thing to begin with when when we began to this much more engaged and active group. So, so I want to talk a little bit here about the about the mentoring structure and about the, you know, the overall intentionality of the way we do things. So, you know, we have specific goals and then we have activities that go with those goals right. So, first, for example, we want to assess course performance. And then we send the letter to the faculty at the beginning of the semester and say okay this is a person that you've got in this class they're a first student they have these additional supports. This is who you contact if you've got any worries whatsoever. And, you know, please let us know if you've got any questions at all. And then we're going to be checking in with you at mid semester mid semester we send a check in, we get way more of a response because we've sent this initial semester letter. So, establishing our relationships. There's a very, there's a very personal introduction. I spend time telling some of my own academic story and my own personal identities, and sharing my, my history, you know with the students as they as they come in and we also spend time sharing our stories. The administrators themselves during boot camp and other things like that, so that there's this recognition and there's a verbal recognition that your identities matter and that we want you to bring yourself to this group. And then also, you know, having a lot of planned one on one time and other types of activities so this list of things to do is enormous right there's all these goals and activities timelines and check ins. The important thing to take away is just the sheer intentionality of it. And so that's, that's a, it's a really useful way to ensure that you're accomplishing the things you want to accomplish, or at least you are planning the activities that are going to address the things you want to accomplish. So we also really spend a lot of time building mentor networks so we do this. There's a couple big events that we have. And the first one is what we call the mentor mixer and so this one we invite students, postdocs and faculty. And we sort of have four main areas of where we're telling people to seek out mentorship this is academic career accountability and social emotional. We let people, we've done this three or four different ways so we've done it almost with sort of speed dating a little bit, or being able to just move through sort of section section with a set of set mentors in particular areas. And it doesn't really make that much of a difference how we structure the event, it's more important that we have the event. So we facilitate connections but what we found is that not as many connections actually get made or sustained, but the students report every year and have reported in our studies that this event is meaningful to them. And that they feel that it is helpful to make connections, even if they don't become formal mentoring connections. And so Research Celebration Day is another really it's our sort of it's our central event of the year and this was this was created by a former student whose motivation was to really know what everyone's doing in terms of their science. And so we decided to make it a very student focused event so there's they we invite an alumni to give a keynote, all the talks are done by students, all the talks are selected by the student committee. It's all student poster sessions and then there's a really big welcome dinner with faculty etc there's always teachers and swag, and it's really like it's a hallmark event. And it's one of because it's one of the few times that we can get together folks from all the way across the masters from the PhD, you know together and to really, really hear what each other is doing which is one of the things students always love to have as an event. And so a small survey that we did last year. A 18 student provide 89% reported that the British program help them build mentor networks. And we also teach them early on what a mentor network is what it looks like, who you are, you know, thinking about who you're missing and how you might be able to build that. So I talked a little bit about the proactive young and wrap around mentoring and so what does that look like for us. I stole this from Mary James from Reed college she says you know essentially whatever academic whatever affects your academic life can be my business, you want it to be. It's just a very important concept that there are things that are going to be happening outside of these walls we don't expect that you are coming into a little science bubble and putting everything down and think all your other selves down right and and just focusing on on on being a scientist. And, you know, when I say proactive I really just mean, you know it's highly planned right and so having things planned means that you're also getting a lot of communication you want a high level of communication between all of these folks you know you want to be able to be talking to everybody that has a lot of contacts with a student they're near peers their peers their advisors their instructors, you know, the, the administration team, like everybody in the, in the, in the community, you want to, you know, sort of be getting a feel on where things are so it's, it's reasonably intrusive I have some people that that sort of push back against this notion but it's really just a matter of of asking. You know how things are going and how people are and and making time and space to just talk about whatever is going on with that student at the time that not with an agenda necessarily other than to connect right. And certainly it's not deficit based. There's never this question of what is wrong with you. You know, it's more about what's going on that's impacting you so sometimes you know I'll have a professor call me of course and be like I just don't understand how to motivate the students and I don't know why they don't have this or that the other and you know and instead of trying to understand what's happening at the time they're trying to analyze what's wrong with the student. And that's definitely not our approach right and we try to try to really maintain this, this very positive and connected way of of mentoring. And after all of these years we've had lots of different places that have wanted to use the model right so the APS came and they built their bridge program on it and that has now turned into the exclusive graduate education network with American Chemical Society with the geophysics society. So, a lot of people have used the model or use the tools which are available. A lot of which are available on the website. And we never had a sense of what was actually, you know, data wise important folks like what do people say is matters to them so some of the questions that we had and this is just a sort of a couple of them. Is how does mentorship compliments the bridges efforts to build sense of community and what academic supports and activities are perceived as most critical to students preparation for and transition to a STEM PhD programs and wanted to be able to tell folks we're looking at the model. Okay, here's what's really important. One of the things that you really want to focus on being able to adapt and adopt. And so what we did with the American Institute of Research and he body school education as part of our NSS sponsored center of excellence if we had interviews over years. And with sometimes with repeat students sometimes with different students and then there was a student survey, which I already mentioned and a social network analysis, which I'll talk about later. So, okay. So the most important thing that we found is the sense of belonging. This is the thing that people represent, you know, say most is important to their to their success to their retention. In the student survey 73% of students report high levels camaraderie with fellow students with their fellows with the faculty in their departments. 78% with program administrators and 89% report camaraderie contributed to success. And I see this is a small number of students, you know the answer the time but this is not actually the first time we've done this student this type of survey. Very similar nine around 90% of folks say that the community or the camaraderie, you know, is part of their is part of their success in the program. So here's some of the qualitative, you know findings from the interviews that the students report, you know in the bridge program I didn't keep with anybody. I felt like we were all in this together. I think the bridge program because it's a family when I need people to lean on or people to talk to that's who I go to. I knew going in that my core would be a group of people that would be my friends and peers but I did not realize just how close and how important they would be to me. I think the things that helped us facilitating us build that strong initial connection was probably the most valuable thing so this was really. It's really great to see that the recognition of, you know, the intentionality and the proactiveness in in building this sort of space, this counter space really are helpful. So and then the other one of the other parts is this attention to transitions. So during the very during the first phase, it's really during the master stage is pretty intense right so during the first year, we're really making this undergrad to master's transition. And then you're making this master's to PhD transition within in year two, and then you know you've got years 123 as you're working on PhD candidacy. And then PhD candidacy and PhD completion and first job in years, you know, four through six right. And so we have activities that are associated with each one of these transition points. So, here's just an example of maybe some traditional milestones you have orientation qualifying exams proposal thesis defense right for a PhD for example. For us, there's, you know, the all of these things act as checkpoints so orientation professional skills. The, they meet with me every semester. Three times a year, the PhD applications the master's completion the PhD transition the qualifying exams right. The thesis defense and job applications and so we, we spend a bit more time in each of those areas and sort of keeping track of where folks are. I try to meet with all the PhD students every year, but also keeping note of okay when are your prelims coming up right. Okay, how can we help you putting that in the thing being, you know, checking in. Me checking in with them not waiting for them to check in with me about whether or not they need a hand practicing their prelims practicing their goals, looking at their documents anything like that right. So just continually sort of offering putting that putting that out in a in a planned way around these around these transition points also came out in the study as being really important. So then just in general, the students reported some academic and professional supports, we provide conference attendance, one during the master's phase and then another in like years four and five to assist in finding a job in the PhD phase. And then, you know, they also report the academic navigation skills, things such as, you know, the culture changes that they're going to experience between MSIs and PWIs, and also just the relationships with mentors, other academic, you know, cultural sort of unspoken things, and then science communication so we spend a lot of time helping folks learn to write and to present to communicate their science well in a way that is safer than their maybe their own lab or or with their with their peers sometimes right if they're if they feel like they're having trouble getting started so here's here's just a few things of having the student reports I was having issues, putting together presentation focusing on the main ideas of paper. I came here and the FBP admin gave me an outline of how to break it down how to go through and prepare the presentation for a journal club and now I'm confident. I came here with my confidence just it's pretty much not there it's diminished and I will leave out of here and she built me back up again. So, so there's, so there's a, there's an aspect of it that is not just about the communication skills, but about the boosting and building of self efficacy and taking those opportunities to show students how far they've come. One of the nice things about having this long term relationship is you're able to reflect back on the student and and put out there and really demonstrate like how far, how far they've grown right. So, so, so we also asked a question about the role of support networks and this is where the social network analysis comes in and so what we did was we asked them about their types of interactions and their frequency of interactions. We looked at a couple different areas we did internal to the bridge. For example, the administrators or their cohort, we did external to the bridge and inside the institution, like their course instructors or postdocs. And then we looked outside their institution, such as the family or church volunteer organizations. And we had a really high rate of social network analysis. That's okay pups. All right. So what we found was that during master's program students to go on to earn a masters have a greater breadth of supports than those who do not finish the masters. So, you'll see those this additional layer of of outside organizations that those students that are masters have. Now it wasn't predictive of their, you know, getting the degree, but it was related and what we did see was that those that level level of engagement where folks felt like they had a support network that that could predict more of their sense of belonging. And that of course as we know is this one of these key motivational components related to persistence so they, so they indicated that the that having the social emotional support career support, the number of people the academic support all had significant impacts on their sense of belonging. So just to sort of recap and and finish up the activities are intentional. The timing is proactive. The mentoring and opportunities are individualized. We really stress the folks that it's about their vision that we're opening doors for them, they're doing the work, we aren't saving them we aren't fixing them. We are opening doors and aligning opportunities right and the focus is on nurturing potential. And it's important to keep in mind that, while this can have real positive impacts on diversity and inclusion right especially once you've built this size of the community, and where you have an inclusive welcoming community of people, it stops short of making differences in equity that we would really like to be able to see. So it has been very difficult to institutionalize these practices, you know the astronomy department has incorporated them, but we have not made the same kind of inroads in physics or other departments across campus. And so there's a real need to go beyond this stage and look at the policies that are responsible for the exclusion of students to begin with. Which is, you know, really why these people are not in the space right they're being excluded they're being marginalized. And so it's, it's really time to think about that next level and moving into equity. And so that's all I have for this presentation so I will stop sharing and we can start to chat. Before we chat can we just give a quick round of applause use your emoji. I thought that was incredible talk there always impressed by your thoughts and reflections. So the chat, the chat is open, please feel free to use your raise hand function or also you can unmute yourself to engage engage in discussion we have about 15 minutes or so. I'll open the floor. Sarah birch has raised hand so go ahead Sarah. Yeah, thank you so much. Wow that was so informative so grateful that I saw your post admin on LinkedIn I was able to come and participate today. The question that I was wondering about was like supporting students with families. You talked about like serving meals to the students kind of in that two week window I didn't know if then if students had families that they were given meals or if there's like a childcare stipend that the bridge program. My offer, like on top of already sort of like student parent sort of benefits on campus. Just wondering how student parents are supported. Yeah, so that we don't have any monies to support the families. For those types of meals, the. Those are typically just for the students but so for all of our other activities, all families are involved so children are always invited spouses and family and friends everybody is invited to those activities that. And we also also started buying to go boxes and having those with the things so that people would like, you know, buying the ball and have people pack up and so they're taking more than one meal home, at least. So yeah, if we can send dinner home for the family we're really happy to send their home for the family and I think people sort of will also even, you know, recognize that. And then we do, we have a hardship fund as well. That's available. That, that we can do things like buy tires. You know, or some unexplained so you know if you do have something like that unexplained medical bills like it's not, you know, something that has to really get proved we have we have those things. And we just try to be family positive and supportive of our folks with children for sure. And invite the spouses engage the spouses invite the children and then just, you know, help wherever we can if it's finding schools. Daycare, you know, just using our own personal networks and experiences. Thank you. Thank you for that question. Mark has a question. I'm sorry, the overview. Could you tell us a little bit more about the mental health aspect recognizing how important well being is. And you mentioned that it was not only right at the beginning in the orientation but throughout the program. Well so this is a totally new. This is a very new pilot so last year we did for the first time. Like an eight week sort of graduate student wellness program. And that is with someone that has, you know, their, their work has focused specifically on marginalized students, specifically on students and HBCU so we were really lucky to find this person in our community. And then, and we have been able to, you know, modestly pay him to do this work and so this year, what we're going to do is have him come and do these sessions. One that are just about like general self care, another that is also focused more broadly on like how do you find a therapist. What are your, what are your options because so fist does not have one person dedicated to mental health services for students, just not not one. So while they have like a counseling center everybody is part time so this is a real issue for us. That's one of the reasons we built the hardship fund was to also pay for co pays for for therapy or other types of those costs, and then. Yeah, so so recognizing that the discriminatory environment that you are going to be in is going to have an impact on your mental health and that this is not something that that is, is you or that you can just, you know, talk your way out of like this is a, these are real. And we want to be able to have things in place to help you want to be able to help you get connected to, you know, to therapy if you need it to psychiatry if you need it. And so it's really a very sort of try to try to give people this resource, this extra mental health layer of resource, and then, and use that expertise to connect them and if it costs money that they can't afford to pay for it. Thank you very much. Yeah. Thanks Mark Herbert. Yeah. So I just wanted to understand the mechanics a little bit. Yeah. The students admitted to Vanderbilt or to Fisk or the admitted to Fisk for the master. That's right. Okay, so they are entirely considered Fisk graduate students. They're considered Fisk graduate students. Yes, but they have Vanderbilt IDs, and they enroll in Vanderbilt forces, and they have access to like Vanderbilt digital resources, and are like wellness resources and any other, like graduate events, or anything like that they can't use is the mental health services and the physical health services, but they're, they're, they're open to being a part of any, everything else. Okay, so they are master's degrees from Fisk. That's right. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for that. Roy, you're up. Yes, thank you for the insights. It's very useful. Could you give us a little bit more background on why some of the departments you mentioned were a little resistive to some of the ideas that you've described, which seemed to me kind of no brainers generally but why was that resistance coming from there is still a fundamental notion that GRE scores are related to capability. To be honest, there is still a reluctance to let go of these quantitative measures and I don't have the slide here but our students, you know, are just not, they're not going to be there. Well, I mean, I have, I have so many data points now, right, and so many points that show I can show you the scores for, for all the people that have already graduated with their PhDs that just don't make the cutoffs for, for most of them don't make the cutoffs for these types of programs. And, and there just isn't the attitude of mentoring as craft, in my opinion, so that this is just me talking that I, I don't feel like there's the kind of recognition of mentoring as being a thing that we should be developing and working in the same way that we work on our teaching. You know, there's, there's still just this sort of notion of if they can't get it with what I'm giving them than that's just too bad. Yeah, thanks for inviting the GRE quantitative metric. Quite a long time now. I think we're finally making some headway collectively. You know, I need to, I should publish that data. We'll keep, keep plugging away. Thank you for those questions. So we still have a time for at least one more question. So there's some, some one last question out there please feel free to put it out in the atmosphere. I'll give a brief pause. So, so I don't have any, I don't, I don't see any hands. I don't, sorry, Emma, go ahead. I was going to wait and see if anyone else had a question. I was just curious, are there any department level program, like, is there anything happening more at the department level to support these students and then how many, you know, is there a little bit of a cohort size within each program. So like how many students would be are in physics or in, you know, some of the other departments. So once they get to their PhD. No. During the masters. Okay, so our cohort sizes are somewhere around eight to 10. And so it's usually over the last couple of years it started to be split 50 50 between like bio and kind of physics and astral. And like this year I think we've got, you know, for physics and astro next year we're going to have five business astro and five bio and chem I think or for bio and chem right. So we try to have a minimum of two people in each track, or at least like, you know, sometimes we only have one chemistry person, but they do take to take so many courses together that at least that together feels like its own, you know, group. And astro feels like its own group because they really take their courses together, right. So, but we try not to take any less anything less than two each track each time. Thank you. So I asked one last last question I'm surprised it hasn't come up yet. So I want to ask the funding question. So, can you talk a little bit you can can you share a little bit about what what funding looks like to support such a program. Yeah, I mean, it's about $2 million a year. And it is a patchwork quilt of funding. So NSF NIH Department of Education are the biggest ones. We have grants all the time we're reading right now on on something that will fund physics and astro for the next, you know, five years. We but we were very, very lucky this year to receive an anonymous million dollar donation. And we've been told that there is more money and trust that is earmarked for us in the future, which is incredible. And that funded five students. We actually had more money than we could fill this year. Which is, you know, not a problem that you want to complain about, except that now we need to hire more faculty, because that was where our now we hit the wall we didn't have enough faculty we need more faculty or got more money. So, yeah, that'll fund another five students and year after that and then but every year it's, it's a struggle and we always worry. How many people are going to be able to take whether or not we're going to be able to build a full cohort and I wish it wasn't like that but it is. Well, thank you. I mean the funding question is always important. Unfortunately, there's not enough funding to support these sort of initiatives and as you kind of alluded to, you know, there's these larger structural challenges that that exists that we tend to use language underrepresented minority, I prefer to say marginalized or excluded or whatever the case may be. And these types of initiatives help help to move the needle for I'll be as slow but still for nonetheless so thank you so much for your time, energy and effort this afternoon here, but we can just give one last round of applause. Thank you. Much appreciated. This is the closing out our MSI coffee chats for this academic year will return again in September with additional invited guests equally as dynamic or hopefully as dynamic as Dr. Here was here today so thank you all for tuning in. The recordings will be made available in about two weeks or so, give or take, and then I'm always available for you all to reach out to and help bridge any connection that I'm able to do so thank you all. Enjoy the rest of your day. Oh yeah, please feel free if anybody has additional questions to email me at dina.m dot stroud at Vanderbilt.edu. I'm very Googleable. You can find me I really am. Thanks so much. Okay, thank you everybody.