RACE21, funded by the National Cancer Institute through its Youth Enjoy Science initiative, was designed to fill a well-documented gap. Historically, cancer workforce development has concentrated on graduate and professional students, leaving undergraduates with little exposure to oncology research before they commit to a career path. The program, run through UAB’s Center for Community OutReach Development in partnership with the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center and the university’s Cancer Biology undergraduate major, set out to change that by offering year-round, multi-year mentored research experiences rather than the short summer internships that dominate the field.

The numbers from the program’s first five years are striking. RACE21 recruited 78 undergraduate students, of whom 51 have already graduated, achieving a 98.5 percent graduation rate that far exceeds the national four-year institutional average of roughly 52 percent. Scholars worked across 43 faculty-led laboratories spanning 23 clinical and research departments, delivered more than 100 presentations at local, national, and international scientific meetings, and co-authored 53 peer-reviewed publications. Approximately 80 percent of alumni are now continuing their education in graduate school, medical training, or positions in cancer research or healthcare.

Recruitment itself became a lesson in how scientific talent finds its way into the pipeline. The program cast a wide net through academic advisors, honors college directors, student organizations such as the Minority Association of Pre-Health Students and the Black Undergraduate Medical Association, campus flyers, and social media. Yet by the second year, word-of-mouth referrals from current participants had emerged as the single most effective recruitment strategy, a finding consistent with research showing that peer relatedness and social support shape persistence in STEM. Applicants submitted transcripts, recommendation letters, and personal statements describing their goals in areas ranging from basic cancer mechanisms to epidemiology and clinical oncology.

Selection favored students with a GPA of 3.5 or higher, clear professional goals, and evidence of community engagement, though prior research experience was not required. Once admitted, trainees were matched individually with mentors based on their stated interests, and mentors were vetted for active funding, recent publications, and mentoring track records. Trainees could reapply annually for up to four years, with each year building on the last: foundational engagement during the pandemic-constrained first year, introduction to research culture and the BioBridge outreach camp in year two, financial literacy and scientific communication in year three, and leadership, entrepreneurship, and advanced research in years four and five.

The technical skills students acquired read like a syllabus for modern cancer biology. Participants described hands-on experience with cell culture, animal models, flow cytometry, immunohistochemistry, Western blotting, gel electrophoresis, and computational and bioinformatics approaches. Just as importantly, they learned that science is iterative. One scholar noted that repeating Western blot experiments helped them get better results after each attempt, while another reflected that even when projects fail, they still love research enough to keep trying. That resilience, the evaluation found, is as much a workforce competency as any laboratory technique.

The program’s quantitative evaluation relied on a mixed-methods design with careful statistical treatment. Attitudes toward cancer biology research were measured with a ten-item scale adapted from a validated survey, and because the scores were ordinal and non-normally distributed, the analysts used Wilcoxon signed-rank tests with rank-biserial correlations as effect sizes and bias-corrected bootstrap confidence intervals. Among 27 matched pre-post pairs, total attitude scores rose significantly, with a large effect size of 0.51. When items were grouped by construct, the strongest gains appeared in Interest, with moderate-to-large shifts in perceived Value and Self-Efficacy, while Commitment changed least, largely because students arrived already deeply committed, producing ceiling effects that limited measurable growth.

Community outreach proved to be an unexpected engine of professional development. RACE21 scholars facilitated BioBridge, Alabama’s first summer STEM camp focused on cancer biology for rising ninth-grade students, reaching more than 170 teenagers. An analysis of 50 open-ended reflections from four cohorts, summarized in a word cloud of the most frequent terms, revealed seven dominant themes: student engagement, teaching and learning, mentorship and leadership, STEM content, communication skills, impact, and program identity. Scholars reported that explaining cancer biology to fourteen-year-olds sharpened their ability to translate complex science for public audiences, a competency the program’s leaders now consider important enough to make mandatory for future trainees.

Mentorship operated at multiple levels simultaneously. Faculty research mentors guided experimental design and career development, program staff provided advising, and a near-peer structure allowed senior undergraduates to support newer ones, a culture students described as tight-knit and uplifting. All surveyed scholars from the third and fourth cohorts reported enjoying their work with faculty mentors, and 97 percent agreed they had sufficient mentor support to accomplish their research goals. Alumni have gone on to medical school, doctoral programs, NIH post-baccalaureate fellowships, dental and optometry schools, and research positions, with several earning Goldwater and Fulbright awards along the way.

The authors are candid about limitations. Selection bias is inherent in a program admitting high-GPA applicants who often arrive with strong science identities, and the adapted attitude scale, while internally consistent, has not undergone full psychometric validation; ceiling effects constrained what the rating scales could detect. Non-significant findings, they caution, should not be read as absence of program influence but as a sign that highly motivated students leave little room on the scale. The deeper lesson may be that for students already inclined toward science, the decisive ingredient is sustained, authentic exposure: longitudinal mentorship, real publications, real conferences, and the chance to teach the next generation. As a scalable model for building the cancer workforce of 2035 and beyond, RACE21 makes a compelling case that the pipeline should begin far earlier than graduate school.

Subject of Research: Evaluation of the RACE21 undergraduate cancer research and education training program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham

Article Title: Building the cancer research workforce through implementation of the RACE21 undergraduate cancer research and education program

Article References: Johnson, M. S., Haynie, K. C., Shevde, L. A., & Wyss, J. M. (2026). Building the cancer research workforce through implementation of the RACE21 undergraduate cancer research and education program. Discover Education, 5(1), Article 1127. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-026-02251-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44217-026-02251-w

Keywords: cancer research, RACE21, undergraduate education, STEM workforce, mentorship, Youth Enjoy Science, National Cancer Institute, science communication, BioBridge, health disparities, student persistence, UAB