Image property of: National Institutes of Health

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently announced a reorganization initiative described as the NIH “Roadmap” (http://nihroadmap.nih.gov). NIH is pursuing this initiative in response to the growing complexity of biomedical research that has resulted from high technology research methods, developed in part for the human genome project, and the massive quantities of data generated by these approaches. This change, coupled with the declining number of students entering graduate schools, provides an additional concern to those already identified in the report by the National Research Council entitled “Bio 2010”. It is now recognized that new organizational models for team science that place a greater value on the ability to work across traditional disciplines, involve multiple institutions and create effective communication among team members will be required.

The focus of the workshop proposed herein, will be to provide a forum for Middle Atlantic and North East (MANE) institutions to discuss and begin to address the implications of the NIH Roadmap on the design and implementation of the undergraduate curriculum as it relates to students with career aspirations in biomedical research. It is clear that changes will be needed and that these are clearly beyond the resources of a single small undergraduate college. However, curricular innovations by larger schools with cumbersome bureaucracies tend to lag behind the identified needs. Thus, this particular challenge is one for which the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE) model of “bringing together the minds, tools, data and methods of inquiry for the advancement of learning and knowledge” among smaller liberal arts colleges is particularly well suited to address. Consequently, the goal of this proposed consensus building conference is to provide a forum to discuss the appropriate steps to respond to the challenges resulting from the circumstances behind the change in organizational structure of the largest healthcare research funding agency in the world. What makes this particularly vital for undergraduate institutions is that one of the major focuses of the NIH proposal is the training of future scientists. The NITLE structure makes it a viable mechanism for rapidly instituting change in how future research scientists are trained during their formative years.

Background:

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently announced a reorganization initiative described as the “NIH Roadmap” (http://nihroadmap.nih.gov/). This organizational change reflects the challenges to developing an effective organizational framework for research in the post genomic era. The NIH organizational structure had been focused around diseases (i.e. the National Cancer Institute or the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) or organs (i.e. the Heart Lung and Blood Institute or the National Eye Institute). This model had been considered the most efficient way to maximize the benefits from research of the past 25 years. But with the completion of the human genome project and the amazing revolutions in technology that have been achieved within the last 5 years, NIH has re-evaluated its organizational structure.

Image Property of: Dr. Rita R. Colwell "Converging Scientific Frontiers: Bioscience to Biocomplexity and Beyond"

One area that is highlighted in the Roadmap is the development of new research teams: “The scale and complexity of today’s biomedical research problems increasingly demand that scientists move beyond the confines of their own discipline and explore new organizational models for team science. For example, imaging research often requires radiologists, physicists, cell biologists and computer programmers to work together on integrated teams. Many scientists will still continue to pursue individual research projects, but they too will be encouraged to make changes in the way they approach the scientific enterprise.”(http://nihroadmap.nih.gov).

While the focus of the Roadmap is on the pinnacle of the biomedical research enterprise, this initiative has major implications for the way in which future research scientists are trained at all educational levels. According to the National Research Council’s “Bio 2010” and consistent with the NIH Roadmap, the next generation of scientists will be expected to participate in teams, work across traditional disciplines and institutional boundaries, and be able to communicate effectively among themselves. Currently the funding opportunities associated with education and training under the NIH Roadmap are focused on graduate and postgraduate programs. Graduate programs are continuing to evolve into more interdisciplinary models and future NIH funding is likely to accelerate these trends. Ultimately however, for the proposed plan to be implemented seamlessly, changes in undergraduate research experiences will also be required. Identifying the core competencies that these programs will expect from undergraduates will be a major challenge.

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Objectives:

Developing a comprehensive, innovative Research Scientist Springboard program is probably beyond the resources of any single MANE member institution. However, the advantage of NITLE is that it provides a framework within which smaller institutions can collaborate to reach goals that they might not be able to achieve individually.

The proposed workshop would bring together institutions with a demonstrated track record in preparing students for graduate school. The focus of the workshop would be to find areas of consensus between participants and establish a network of individuals and institutions to:

1) Share the core competencies required by graduate and post-graduate biomedical research institutions,

2) Share the research capacities of participating member schools,

3) Identify the best practices to expose undergraduates to high technology instrumentation, in a cross-disciplinary setting, and to hone interpersonal and communication skills to allow students to function as part of a research team. [MANE has already addressed some aspects of this type of challenge in developing their bioinformatics theme. The extension of this strategy to include hands-on research experiences would build upon that bioinformatics initiative as well as utilize some of the shared resource principles pioneered by the Genome Consortium for Active Teaching (GCAT, www.bio.davidson.edu/Biology/GCAT/GCAT.html) which enabled the introduction of gene chip microarray technology into the undergraduate research laboratory.]

4) Begin to develop a collaborative proposal that will enhance all participating institutions, and

5) Establish teams, tasks and a follow-up strategy for continuation and further collaboration using the best available Center for Educational Technology (CET) resources.

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Program Links:

Attendee List and Contact Information
The Bioinformatics Initiative at Dickinson College
The NIH Life Science Roadmap: Roadwork at the K-12 Level - Lorraine Mulfinger
Ten Equations that Changed Biology - John Jungck
Conference Agenda
Abstracts from Presentations
GCAT Homepage - A. Malcolm Campbell
Meeting the Challenges: Education across the Biological, Mathematical, and Computer Sciences
Bio2010 Survey
Expense Reimbursement Form
NSF Funding Opportunities in Biology - Sally O'Connor
Bates Summitt - Thomas Wenzel
Bioquest - John Jungck
Roadmap for Reaching Underrepresented Populations in Genome Science - Edison Fowlks
Science In Society in the 21st Century: Interdisciplinarity and Beyond - Paul Grobstein
The Department of Energy: Genomes to Life - Daniel Drell (54 MB file)
Interdisciplinary Sciences at Haverford College - Phil Meneely
"Pathways Leading to a Career in Interdisciplinary Biomedical" - Jeff Sich
Council on Undergraduate Reserach - www.cur.org

NIH Links:

NIH Peer Review Video: http://www.csr.nih.gov/Video/Video.asp
CRISP database: http://www.crisp.cit.nih.gov/
NIH guide: http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/guide/index.html
NIMH: http://www.nimh.nih.gov
NIMH Grants: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/ResearchFunding/grants.cfm
CSR: http://www.csr.nih.gov/welcome.htm
Mock study section video: http://www.csr.nih.gov/Video/video.asp
Links to study sections and their rosters: http://www.csr.nih.gov/review/irgdesc.html
NIH Roadmap: http://nihroadmap.nih.gov

CET Links:

An introduction: http://cet.middlebury.edu/about.php
The MANE group: http://cet.middlebury.edu/about_institutions.php
The grants process by which this meeting was supported: http://cet.middlebury.edu/prgm_regional_mane.php; a list of projects to date: http://cet.middlebury.edu/prgm_regional_mane_what.php
Our national group, NITLE: http://www.nitle.org/
Our blogs: http://blogs.cet.middlebury.edu/mane/ and http://www.nitle.org/tech_news.php

Relevant Links:

NIH Roadmap: http://nihroadmap.nih.gov
Genome Consortium for Active Teaching: http://www.bio.davidson.edu/Biology/GCAT/GCAT.html
Juniata College: http://www.juniata.edu
Juniata College Sciences: http://www.juniata.edu/excellenceinscience
Dr. Michael D.P. Boyle, Ph.D.: http://faculty.juniata.edu/bio.html?BOYLE
"Bye Bye Bio 10 :Teach Science the Way You Do Science": http://www.hhmi.org/news/042304.html
Integrated Natural Sciences Initiative, Haverford College: http://www.haverford.edu/INSC/insc_webpages/subpages/insc_introduction.htm
Center for Science in Society, Bryn Mawr College: http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/local/scisoc/about.html
Juniata’s Organic First Chemistry Curriculum: http://faculty.juniata.edu/reingold/curric.html

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Contact Us:

For more information about the particulars of this workshop contact:

Dr. Michael D.P. Boyle, Ph.D
boyle@juniata.edu
Webpage
814-641-3553