The hidden curriculum encompasses the norms, values, and behaviors within a learning environment. Navigating the hidden curricula of academia is crucial for doctoral trainees, particularly those from underrepresented backgrounds. Faculty mentors have an important role in helping trainees uncover and cope with the hidden curriculum. The purpose of this paper is to explore perceptions of the hidden curriculum among diverse doctoral trainees and mentors.

Following a presentation on the hidden curriculum at the Association for Clinical and Translational Science annual meeting in March 2021, attendees were asked to brainstorm ideas for diverse trainees and their mentors. Breakout room discussions were held for specific hidden curriculum topics; participants voted on which topics to discuss from a list of topics defined during the presentation. Ideas from these discussions were presented to the larger group to upvote.

Participants (n = 116) voted to discuss the following hidden curriculum topics: “coping with bias,” “assertive communication,” “knowing how things work,” and “developing a career.” Many suggestions emphasized the role of institutions in empowering mentors to help diverse trainees and, more generally, to meaningfully support policies and programs that facilitate the career success of trainees and faculty from underrepresented backgrounds.

This work generated a list of suggested action items for trainees, mentors, and institutions to ameliorate the hidden curricula of academia, especially for diverse trainees. However, institutions need to support changes that will facilitate these discussions as well as more broadly enable the success of faculty and students from diverse backgrounds.

Along with the greater research enterprise, Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) had to quickly adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic. IRBs had to review and oversee COVID-related research, while navigating strict public health measures and a workforce largely relegated to working from home. Our objectives were to measure adjustments to standard IRB review processes, IRB turnaround time and document and any novel ethical issues encountered.

Structured data requests were sent to members of the Consortium to Advance Effective Research Ethics Oversight directing Human Research Protection Programs (HRPP).

Fourteen of the 32 HRPP director members responded to a questionnaire about their approach to review and oversight during COVID-19. Eleven of the 14 provided summary data on COVID-19-specific protocols and six of the 11 provided protocol-related documents for our review. All respondents adopted at least one additional COVID-19-specific step to their usual review process. The average turnaround time for convened and expedited IRB reviews was 15 calendar days. In our review of the documents from 194 COVID-19-specific protocols (n = 302 documents), we identified only a single review that raised ethical concerns unique to COVID-19.

Our data provide a snapshot of how HRPPs approached the review of COVID-19-specific protocols at the start of the pandemic in the USA. While not generalizable to all HRPPs, these data indicate that HRPPs can adapt and respond quickly response to a pandemic and likely need little novel expertise in the review and oversight of COVID-19-specific protocols.

Although the involvement of citizen scientists in research can contribute to scientific benefits, much remains unknown about participants’ lived experiences in research. Thus, the purpose of this study was to explore how citizen scientists describe their role in, motivation for, and communication with researchers.

In-depth interviews (N = 9) were conducted with citizen scientists at a translational health research center.

Key results include that citizen scientists were invested in learning researchers’ discipline-specific language and viewed small group sizes as conducive to their active participation.

Programs can apply these findings in an effort to improve citizen scientists’ long-term engagement in research.