The University of California at San Diego (UCSD) and San Diego State University (SDSU) propose to continue a successful institutional research and academic career development award (IRACDA) program for postdoctoral scholars. Six trainees will enter each year for a 3-year training period. The San Diego IRACDA Program will recruit and train under-represented postdoctoral fellows in top research labs, coupling mentored research with focused training in teaching, research ethics, grant writing, lab management, and a variety of professorial skills. The immediate goals are to help these postdocs begin independent research careers with appropriate skills to succeed, and to place IRACDA Fellows in tenure track jobs within the UC and California State University systems. The long-term goal is to increase the number of under-represented faculty and faculty committed to the education of URMs nation-wide. Research training will occur primarily at UCSD, and will include weekly lab meetings, departmental seminars, evaluated research presentations, monthly meetings with the PI, a course in research ethics, courses in grant and paper writing, and annual attendance at a national meeting (poster presentations in years 2 and 3) and the National IRACDA meeting. These activities will be coordinated by Drs. Brunton and Villarreal. Teaching will occur at SDSU, under the coordination of Dr. Pozos, in a design that keeps the emphasis on continual research progress. Following a six month period in the lab to establish their research, fellows will prepare &deliver 3 lectures per semester in a beginning biology course for 5 semesters, with training in classroom management, advising, assessment, e-curriculum development, and development of individual teaching styles. The academic emphasis is on mammalian systems biology, which also expands the Fellows' knowledge, since many of them have specialized without comprehensive training in biology. Expectations are substantial esprit de corps amongst Fellows, a major publication during year two, a research grant in draft form by the second half of year three, a portfolio of exemplary lectures by the end of year three, and a more advanced position or job offer at the end of year three. Fellows will be followed for ten years from the start of the program (roughly to the time of a tenure decision) and their progress compared to that of the general pool of postdoctoral fellows on the two campuses, majority postdocs in the San Diego IRACDA, other postdoctoral fellows in the same labs, and, as data become available, the national pool of NIH-supported postdocs.
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