Training Program

Even before the Carolina Population Center was officially founded in 1966, training future population researchers had a central role in the Center's mission. In 1965, Moye Freymann, soon to be CPC’s first Director, wrote a proposal to the Ford Foundation for support for the Center’s initial activities. In it, he wrote that a “major emphasis will be given…to the development of advanced, doctoral-level studies in the population field…[which] will be based in concerned university departments, and…will attract potential leaders in population research, teaching, and administration, at home and abroad.”

The Center’s Academic Programs Office (APO) handled the majority of the activities related to students interested in population studies. Led by Vaida Thompson, a faculty member in the Psychology Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and affiliated with CPC since 1968, the APO encouraged students at the University who were interested in population studies to become involved with the Center’s activities. CPC offered colloquia, seminars, workshops, and conferences, and encouraged students to interact with those in other disciplines who were doing population research. Students became affiliated with CPC by indicating an interest in population studies, which allowed the training program to expand exponentially in just a few years.

Two components of CPC’s early training program remain a part of the Center in 2006: the seminars series, a weekly lecture during the academic year presented by population scholars to encourage cross-discipline learning about population research; and the involvement of faculty in the designation of affiliated courses. First this was achieved by an advisory committee of faculty, in coordination with staff from the APO, and then became the responsibility of a Training Committee first appointed by Udry. The Training Committee remains in existence in 2006, and reviews courses offered by academic departments and evaluates their content for population relevance, approving courses that can be taken to satisfy requirements of the CPC training program. Since the early 1980s, the Training Committee has also reviewed applications received by prospective trainees.

In the early years, as the Center’s activities grew to be very internationally oriented, so did the training program. The Center’s International Programs Office, led by Betty Cogswell, worked with students from abroad who wanted to study population research at UNC, and with U.S. students who wanted to train in other countries. In 1968–1969, there were 99 population students at CPC, 43 of them international students. Table 1 shows the distribution of students by their home country.

Table 1, Distribution of Students by Home Country, 1968–1969:

 

Home Country	Number of Students
Australia	1
Belgium	1
Canada	1
China	2
Egypt	3
England	1
India	24
Ireland	1
Liberia	1
Nigeria	1
Pakistan	5
Peru	1
Thailand	3
United Kingdom	1
United States	53
Total	99

Table 2 shows the change from 1969 to 1972 in the number of students at UNC-CH who were concentrating in population studies. Of the 121 students concentrating in population studies in 1972, those in Academic Affairs departments had increased significantly since 1969, while those in Health Affairs declined only slightly.

An important observation is that the training program has always been multidisciplinary, and Table 2 indicates the breadth of interdisciplinary involvement in the Center's first decade.

Table 2, Home Departments of UNC-CH Students Concentrating in Population Studies, 1969 and 1972:

Academic Affairs			Health Affairs
Department	1969 Enrollment	1972 Enrollment	Department	1969 Enrollment	1972 Enrollment
Anthropology	7	16	Biostatistics	12	13
Economics	0	1	Epidemiology	6	3
Education	2	14	Genetics	2	0
Geography	2	4	Health Administration	15	12
Library Science	0	1	Health Education	6	11
Political Science	4	9	Maternal and Child Health	13	10
Psychology	3	6
Sociology	15	17
Zoology	10	4
Totals	43	72	Totals	54	49

 

J. Richard Udry became CPC Director in 1977. In the late 1970s, the funding landscape shifted, the Center’s focus turned to research, and the training program saw changes as well. In 1982, Udry reorganized the Center’s organizational structure so that the Academic Programs Office and the International Programs Office were phased out.

With input from Advisory Council, Udry made some changes to streamline and simplify the training program. He also worked with academic departments to develop a new understanding of how CPC’s training program would work with departments that had students interested in population studies. The goal was to reduce friction between the departments and the Center, and Udry’s strong leadership and practical approach to resolving the issues accomplished that goal. The primary solution was the development of the Fellows program. Fellows continued to have departmental responsibilities, and also formed the intellectual core of the Center.

Udry created a Training Coordinator position, held by Debbie Ussery-Baumrucker until about 1982 and then by Don Thomas until 1999. Thomas was a staunch advocate for the trainees’ well-being at the Center, helping to ensure that trainees each had workspace at CPC and access to adequate computing resources to do their work. Thomas also served as the photographic documentarian of the Center, having a camera ready at any notable — or not so notable — event.

CPC first received financial support for training activities in 1967. Funding was provided first by the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Compton Foundation, and USAID. Since then, financial support has come from many other sources including the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), National Institute on Aging, the National Science Foundation, and the Fogarty International Center, as well as the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Requirements from funding agencies often dictated whether sponsorship could be provided for predoctoral trainees or postdoctoral scholars, for U.S. residents working in the U.S., U.S. residents training overseas, or international trainees at CPC.

In 1983, the Hewlett Foundation provided funding to the CPC training program to support international trainees and their research and training. The Hewlett Foundation provided this support to also help “seed” small scale projects that had findings that could merit larger scale research. Hewlett funding ended in 2005. In 1984, CPC sought support for the training program from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. These funds were used initially to develop and strengthen interdisciplinary biosocial research and training with scholars from developing countries, specifically in reproductive epidemiology. Later the focus of these funds shifted to fertility change in developing countries and then urbanization processes and population-environment relationships within those countries. Mellon funding ended in 2005.

In 1987, Udry named Amy Tsui Deputy Director of CPC and, as part of that role, she directed the training program. Though Don Thomas continued to manage the day-to-day operations of the training program, Tsui was charged with supervising the Training Committee, seeking new types of funding for the training program, and developing and implementing new strategies to strengthen the program and trainee involvement. Tsui resigned from her position in 1991 to become Principal Investigator of the USAID-funded Evaluation Project at CPC, though she remained partially involved for another year.

Don Thomas, who started his position as Training Coordinator in 1982, retired in 1999. At the time of his retirement, there were 12 postdoctoral scholars at CPC and approximately 35 predoctoral trainees each year at CPC.

Cara Crisler assumed the role of Training Coordinator in 1999, followed by Jan Hendrickson-Smith in 2002. Although Hewlett, Mellon, and Compton funding were phasing out, the award of an NSF training program provided new sources of trainee support. The program now accepts the highest number of trainees that CPC has seen in years.

Some of the funding sources that CPC has relied upon to support the Center’s training program have shifted their focus away from population research or from providing research support to international trainees, and thus the program faces a challenge in funding support at the existing level. This is amidst the Center’s adjustment to a restricted funding environment for the Center’s core services, providing support to research conducted by Fellows. At the same time, there is a notable interest in training programs for population research in a multidisciplinary setting, involving the environment, spatial aspects, and nutrition and obesity. The fact that the CPC training program has been interdisciplinary from the start may provide the needed foundation to leverage new types of support for tomorrow’s population researchers.

For example, in 2003, CPC was awarded a five-year National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) training grant. CPC has the only IGERT grant so far awarded to UNC-CH. With the IGERT program as a basis, CPC has developed an interdisciplinary program in Population and Environment. This training grant supports doctoral students with a research focus on population and environment, which integrates areas within the social, spatial, and biophysical sciences. Major research themes include deforestation, agricultural extensification, land fragmentation, intensification, soil degradation, secondary plant succession, and urbanization. CPC’s IGERT training program is international in focus, with particular attention to population and land use in developing countries, specifically Ecuador, the Galapagos Islands, Mozambique, Nepal, the Philippines, Tanzania, and Thailand. IGERT support also provides opportunities for local area university students with its successful minority undergraduate internship program in population and environment.

In 2004, CPC received the “MENTOR Award for Excellence in Research Training” from NICHD.

In the fall of 2006, the training program included 51 predoctoral trainees from 11 UNC academic departments and 15 postdoctoral scholars. CPC records indicate that more than 400 predoctoral students and postdoctoral scholars have been involved with CPC’s training program. A list of many of the alumni of the training program is provided here.

For information and news on training alumni, please visit one of the following websites:

http://www.cpc.unc.edu/training/alum2000.html
http://www.cpc.unc.edu/training/alum90s.html
http://www.cpc.unc.edu/training/alum80.html