An Inside Look at NU PREP – Northwestern's Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program
by Hana Ahmed
If you’ve spent some time around the Mesulam Center this year, you may have had the pleasure of running into Donte Garcia, a current student at the Northwestern University Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program (NU PREP).
NU PREP is a one-year course that provides enhanced research training, academic support, and mentoring to recent postbaccalaureate students, like Donte, who are planning to apply to PhD programs in biomedical research. It is designed to prepare its trainees for competitive admissions to graduate school and success thereafter. Donte graduated from Purdue University in Indiana in May 2022, before joining the NU PREP cohort of seven students. If you haven’t had the pleasure of meeting him yet, don’t worry. Donte is currently in the process of deciding where to take his next step and is leaning towards staying at Northwestern as he begins his PhD.
Entry into NU PREP is competitive and based on past research experience, research interests, and career plans. Housed in the Northwestern University Interdepartmental Neuroscience program (NUIN), NU PREP offers training in a highly interdisciplinary and collaborative research environment that spans 20 departments and three campuses. This research-intensive program is supplemented with individualized advising, coursework in neuroscience, and instruction in scientific communication skills, with opportunities to present research.
John Disterhoft, a core faculty member at the Mesulam Center, directs NU PREP and remains committed to their mission of training scholars from diverse backgrounds—students from underrepresented groups, students with disabilities, or students from socially or economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
When speaking to Donte about his journey into NU PREP, he mentions a strong interest in neuroscience that began in his undergraduate studies. Initially, the hallmark of dementias, Alzheimer’s disease captured his interest. “What really interested me about Alzheimer's disease is how little is known about the pathology and how this and other dementia disorders develop. Because of that, there are minimal treatments and no cures for neurodegenerative diseases. That, in my eyes, became an area I wanted to contribute to with research,” explains Donte. Now, his research has opened the door to learning more about all the different types of neurodegenerative diseases. Furthermore, he talks about how it piqued his interest when recognizing how “biological developments in the brain could lead to such profound differences in cognition and behavior,” like the memory loss associated with Alzheimer’s.
“I wanted to go to a neuroscience PhD program, but in my senior year I really felt like I needed another year of help and support to help me get to graduate school. I wanted guidance on my application, support on research enhancement, and an overall extra year to support myself and become more competitive for graduate school,” says Donte.
Prior to joining NU PREP, Donte had a number of different research assistantships and conducted his own independent research project in his senior year. “With that I developed an interest in contributing to like treatments, cures, and identification of disease processes for neurodegenerative diseases.” NU PREP was an enticing option for Donte because the subject matter catered to his interests, and it was clear that the program emphasized professional development. “It was the best of both worlds for me to get the next level research experience I needed and also the necessary advising,” he says.
Donte is extremely fond of the mentorship he received from the principal investigator (PI) he worked with, Changiz Geula, who is also a core faculty member of the Mesulam Center. Something that is also unique to the Mesulam Center is the "brain bank,” which allows researchers to work with real post-mortem human brain tissue.
The tissue found in the brain bank is what allowed Donte to carry out his research. His project focused on corticobasal degeneration (CBD), a subtype of frontotemporal dementia (FTD). CBD differs from Alzheimer’s in the behavioral deficits that are noticed in patients, with CBD patients facing more speech impediments and loss of motor control. Donte’s research uses Alzheimer's as a model to study the pathology of CBD, looking at whether the same class of neurons is as highly susceptible to degeneration in both disease processes.
Having access to mentorship and resources like he did this past year is a huge part of Donte’s excitement to stay at his current lab when he joins the PhD program, but he also remains open to seeing what other labs might have to offer.
He also speaks fondly of the NU PREP cohort of students that he grew close to over this past year. Having a small cohort made the entire process feel really personalized, especially with the training sessions and classes they had to attend. “Me and my cohort get along great too, and the social events they had for us at the beginning of the year were really fun.” Together, the NU PREP cohort took on many feats, from the classic Chicago architecture boat tour to traveling together to present at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minoritized Scientists (ABRCMS) in southern California.
Reflecting on his experience over the past year, Donte is all smiles as he talks about how productive he feels like the year was for him. NU PREP is “really encompassing and it hit a lot of the requirements that you’d want in a gap year enhancement program.”