This meeting evolved in response to discussions amongst training program directors at the Graduate Student Colloquium at FASEB in 2004. An informal meeting of Directors of Graduate Studies identified a number of challenges faced by training programs and some innovative solutions used by others. At this meeting, a strong consensus was reached that a national meeting dedicated to exchanging information concerning these challenges and solutions would benefit all. Further, many Directors felt that this forum could be used as an opportunity to build a healthy lobby for the discipline of Pharmacology and the training programs run under this discipline. The first meeting was held in 2005 at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee (2005 meeting website). The second meeting was held in 2007 at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City (link to meeting (2007 meeting website ). Our next meeting is planned for April 2009 in New Orleans, Louisiana, and is hosted jointly by Tulane University School of Medicine and LSU Health Sciences Center. The meeting website url is http://www.aspet.org/ndogs/index.html.