Several federal and state institutions including the NIH have recognized the urgent need to expand the participation of individuals from underrepresented minorities in all areas of health-related research. To this end, these organizations have actively solicited the involvement of educational institutions in providing pathways for students from minority population to be engaged and to participate in biomedical research. An increase in researchers from underrepresented minorities will not only contribute towards a strong and diverse work force, it will also help in tacking important chronic diseases areas such as cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes and pulmonary disorders that disproportionately afflict the minority population. This proposal aims to establish the `Summer Pharmacy Experiences in Academic Research' program, or SPEAR, at the Hampton University School of Pharmacy. This program will offer a 10-week intensive hands-on research-training course to minority students from the School of Pharmacy. This program will select minority students that have successfully completed their first year of pharmacy school, and place them in research laboratories under the guidance of mentoring faculty in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences that have been identified. These trainees will be instructed in several area of biomedical research, encouraged to execute research ideas with the help of their mentor, and put together a short research paper and an abstract to be presented at national conferences over the period of two summers. The program is designed such that the first year will be completed at Hampton University laboratories, whereas students that return for a second summer will be sent to laboratories at Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) and West Virginia University (WVU) for a more intensive research experience. The overall goal of this training program is to foster in these minority students the desire to pursue a future in health-related research following graduation from pharmacy school.
Aim I is designed to identify and select the most appropriate minority student candidates to participate in the summer research program. At present we will be training six students in the first year, and nice in subsequent years, all of whom will be placed under the mentorship of research faculty either at HU, EVMS or WVU.
In Aim II, the selected trainees will be engaged over multiple years within the program wherein they will generate a research proposal under the supervision of their faculty mentors over a 10-week period in the summer, and will generate preliminary experimental data in relation to the project. They will also be instructed in the responsible conduct of research, and participate in journal club seminars and case presentations. At the end of this training period, the students will be required to generate a short scientific report. Students will be encouraged to participate in a local or national conference in their field of research, where they will be asked o submit abstracts that may make them eligible for poster or oral presentation. Finally, the program will be put through formative and summative assessments in Aim III in order to evaluate the success of the program. Graduating trainees will be tracked long-term to evaluate whether the training that they obtained through this program directed them pursue a career in biomedical research. This program is an essential step towards encouraging participation of minority pharmacy students in academic research, will help in contributing towards a diverse workforce in health-related research careers, and aid in fulfilling the mission of the NHLBI and NIH in expanding the representation of minority health practitioners in the research arena.
The overall objective of this program is to establish a training initiative that will expose minority pharmacy students to biomedical research, and help increase their participation in academic research. We propose to introduce a new research training program, SPEAR (Summer Research Experiences in Academic Research) that will provide research exposure to students over two years. Each year, applications will be solicited from minority pharmacy students, and trainees will be selected to participate in a 10-week intensive program in introductory biomedical research. This multi-year program will involve both didactic and laboratory components, conducted under the guidance of a faculty mentor in the School of Pharmacy at Hampton University and at collaborating institutions, namely West Virginia University and Eastern Virginia Medical School. At the culmination on the course, the ?SPEAR scholars? will be required to write a short research report, and be encouraged to submit their work for presentation at national conferences. The SPEAR Program represents an important first step for Hampton University Shool of Pharmacy to train minority students in basic biomedical research, and is an important step towards contributing to a more diverse workforce.
