? This proposal is to renew an institutional National Research Award that provides short-term research training for medical students. The Vanderbilt Medical Student Research Training Program (SRTP) in Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism provides an intensive, high-quality research experience to medical students early in their academic careers. By doing so, this program seeks to improve the medical student's understanding of the importance of research and to expose students to career opportunities in biomedical research. Since its inception in 1975, this program has provided research training for over 600 students from 65 medical schools. The thematic focus of the program is diabetes and endocrinology and takes advantage of the long-standing, broad-based excellence of basic and clinical research in this area at Vanderbilt. The faculty of the SRTP is carefully selected based on both their research interest and their desire to provide a research opportunity for medical students and is composed of 78 investigators (Including Drs. Powers, Wasserman and Pichert) from the Departments of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, Medicine, Biochemistry, Pharmacology, Pediatrics, Surgery, Pathology, Psychology, Psychiatry, and Cell Biology. The research opportunities for the medical student are quite diverse and range from gene regulation to signal transduction to in vivo human studies to behavioral psychology. Through a variety of electronic and personal networks and through printed announcements, virtually all US medical students are informed mid-way through their first year about the SRTP. Meritorious candidates from Vanderbilt and other medical schools are selected and participate in a 12 week research experience at Vanderbilt. Approximately one-half of the participants are from a variety of US medical schools and one-half are Vanderbilt students. A monthly stipend is provided to participants. The SRTP receives support from the current T-35 training program, the NIH-funded Vanderbilt Diabetes Research and Training Center (VDRTC), and the Office of the Dean of the School of Medicine at Vanderbilt. The funds from the T-35 support 25 medical students with the other funds being used to support additional students (up to 5/year) and other activities of the SRTP such as a visiting professor and travel allowance for non-Vanderbilt students. The program utilizes the traditional research preceptor/role model approach. Each student is matched with an established investigator with whom he/she designs and executes a research project. In addition, student participants are united on a regular basis for a lecture series on clinical diabetes and current challenges for diabetes research, to interact with senior scientists, and for social events. At the conclusion of the summer research experience, each participant presents a summary of his/her research in a traditional scientific meeting format. Mechanisms to assess the impact of the program, student satisfaction, faculty satisfaction, and career choices of the student participants are in place and indicate that the program is having a positive impact on student attitudes toward biomedical research, is providing a positive research experience for medical students, and is encouraging students to choose careers involving biomedical research. ? ?
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