Student Diversity

UVA is highly committed to identifying and recruiting promising candidates from underrepresented minority (URM) groups, including those with disabilities. Ensuring racial, ethnic, and differently abled diversity among the University of Virginia Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) trainees serves not only to help to address historical disparities in the training of physician-scientists but also to augment the learning environment for all students involved. Diversity within the Program helps students, as a group, to posit and address questions that impact diverse populations and to improve their effectiveness in conducting fundamental aspects of their future professional duties, including the placement of a greater emphasis on racial, gender, and accessibility issues in their research and in the classroom, the teaching and mentoring of their own future students, and caring for patients from varied backgrounds.

It is our explicit goal to create an inclusive environment that attracts the type of diverse student who is looking forward to calling the University of Virginia’s MSTP home. These students desire to work with leading research faculty members and to make fundamental contributions to biomedical research with potential future clinical application. At UVA’s MSTP, students will find themselves in a rich intellectual environment in which mentoring at all levels is available to help ensure optimal scientific and clinical training. UVA’s MSTP helps place its’ students in an outstanding position to compete for the nation’s top residency and postdoctoral fellowship programs with the eventual goal of becoming leaders in their field of choice.

In an effort to achieve the Program’s goals and promote equity and diversity within medical and scientific education, the UVA local chapter of the American Physician Scientists Association formed a Diversity Committee.

Office for Diversity at the School of Medicine