The University of Pennsylvania's Postdoctoral Opportunities in Research and Teaching (PENN-PORT) Program aims to provide a combination of a traditional mentored postdoctoral research experience at the University of Pennsylvania and an opportunity for postdoctoral appointees to develop teaching skill. Instruction in teaching will include a formal semester-long course in pedagogical methods from the Graduate School of Education at PENN as well as a mentored teaching experience at a minority serving partner institution in the Mid-Atlantic states. The mentored latter will take place at one of the following minority-serving Institutions: Lincoln University, the nations oldest historically Black university and the Rutgers University campuses, Newark and Camden, which have significant African-American and Latino undergraduate enrollment. The three year training combines cutting-edge, independent rearch at PENN in the Schools of Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and Dental Medicine, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute or the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia under the direction of one of PENN's faculty, selected for their outstanding training records and well funded laboratories, and classroom teaching at the participating institutions supervised by distiguished teaching faculty. PENN-PORT postdocs will spend one semester auditing a course that they will teach in the following semester under the supervision of their teaching mentor at that institution. They will also design and execute a new course in consulation with their teaching mentor. The major objective of the program is to encourage undergraduate students, particularly those from under-represented groups, at partner institutions to pursue a major in the sciences, graduate education in the biomedical sciences, and a biomedical scientific career. In addition to their classroom experience with the postdoc, each summer after their first and second years, a student will be hosted by the postdoc for a summer research project in the research mentor's lab at PENN. A further objective of the PENN-PORT Program is to increase the pool of well prepared biomedical classroom educators who are also extremely well qualified research scientists. Postdoctoral appointees will receive research training at PENN, certified pedagogical instruction at PENN, teaching and mentoring experiences at partner institutions, and develop other professional skills through programs especially designed for postdocs by PENN's Biomedical Postdoctoral Programs. Since at least 25% of the appointees to this program will be under-represented minorities, this will also increase the number of minorities entering academic careers. Our third objective is to enhance research-oriented teaching at partner institutions and foster collaboration in research and teaching between the faculty at PENN and that of partner minority-serving institutions. The partner institution will have more research-oriented courses due to the investment of postdocs in course development.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 81 publications
