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This article analyzes three major video game titles and their representations of religion, attempting to uncover what exactly is being taught about religion by video games and situating these findings within a broader discourse using the work of the sociologist Max Weber. Three major themes are shared between the games: rejection of religious authority, privatization of sin, and disenchantment of religion. These findings are discussed in relation to popular understandings of religion in American culture.

Although new investigators leading research operations may be well trained to conduct research, they often have limited practical experience leading research teams. To address this unmet need, the Aggie Research Program (ARP) was developed in 2016 to advance the research careers of graduate students and postdoctoral scholars by connecting them with teams of undergraduates seeking research experiences. The requirements for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars to become “Team Leaders” are simple: they must get permission from their faculty mentors to participate, have an active research project, select and train a team of 3‐8 undergraduates, meet with their team once a week, and submit short weekly progress reports. To earn certification of completion, they must also attend monthly Team Leader meetings where they discuss best practices in leadership and complete a “Best Practices Report” to document their innovations to address challenges. This scalable structure allowed the ARP program to grow exponentially until a critical mass was achieved for Team Leaders to congregate in different affinity groups, which could then be formalized in distinct research leadership programs with different disciplinary or vocational focuses. In 2020, the ARP partnered with the Michael E. DeBakey Institute at Texas A&M University to create the DeBakey Executive Research Leadership program for graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and junior faculty. This program leverages the combined 50 years of leadership experience of the Director and the Executive Director of the DeBakey Institute to distill a set of “research leadership principles” consistent with successful leadership careers at Texas A&M. These principles are introduced at the beginning of each Team Leader meeting to stimulate discussion of current challenges faced by Team Leaders. By bridging the deep experience of established leaders with the broad experience of a diverse cohort of emerging leaders, the DeBakey Executive Research Leadership Program structures a resilient, mutually supportive community that has grown during a pandemic. In the fall of 2021, it not only provided research leadership training for 47 Team Leaders, but also created research opportunities for 229 undergraduates. This multilevel, experience‐based training program provides a strategy to fill a critical gap in research training that cannot be filled by standard leadership or mentoring workshops which are typically too general, too short in duration, and too removed from the context in which they were originally developed.

Novel research education models often fail to propagate widely because they typically only include two of four necessary properties to successfully propagate and maintain their impacts: scalability, adaptability, sustainability, and inclusivity. Furthermore, research education models typically address the unmet needs of one stakeholder at a time. First, undergraduates need greater access to limited research opportunities at research‐extensive universities. Second, graduate students and postdoctoral scholars need mentoring and management experience to prepare for leadership roles in the next stage of their careers. Third, faculty need to maximize research productivity and recruit future graduate students with sufficient preparation. Fourth, administrators need to stretch their limited resources to support the competing institutional missions of research and education. The Research‐Intensive Community (RIC) model developed at Texas A&M University has the properties that are both necessary and sufficient to propagate broadly at research‐extensive universities because it turns the competing needs of diverse stakeholders into opportunities. Briefly, instead of a traditional 1‐on‐1 research apprenticeship, research is performed by a diverse undergraduate research team led by a graduate student or postdoctoral scholar. Research teams are productive because they leverage each undergraduate’s unique assets (talents, skills, perspectives, and experiences) to advance the research of the graduate student or postdoctoral scholar. Team leaders meet monthly to discuss best practices for leadership and mentoring that increase their own research productivity through effective team management. Because team leaders are empowered to run their team by their faculty mentors, economies of scale are leveraged to efficiently centralize program marketing, participant registration, project advertisement, and program evaluation. Since 2016, the Aggie Research Program (ARP) has implemented the RIC model to cultivate mutually beneficial relationships to meet the diverse needs of diverse stakeholders. As the ARP has grown, team leader meetings have become a nexus for specific research leadership programs that are either interdisciplinary or focused on specific life science disciplines. The ARP exhibits the necessary and sufficient properties for successful propagation: 1) Scalability: participation has grown 30% each of the first 5 years to currently serve over 800 participants/year 2) Adaptability: research teams are distributed across diverse disciplines in 12 colleges. 3) Sustainability: administrative costs are limited to $50,000/year. 4) Inclusivity: 41% of participants belong to underrepresented groups (financially disadvantaged, first‐generation, disabled and underrepresented minorities), which matches the demographics of the undergraduate student population at Texas A&M University.