Our Short-Term Training Grant Program for medical student summer research experiences reflects our institution's long-standing commitment to foster students' interest in a career that encompasses clinical and translational research. In this resubmission, we seek support for 10 student slots in a 9-week summer fellowship. This support augments the support we have gathered throughout Wake Forest School of Medicine (WFSM) to allow additional students to participate each year. This enthusiastic institutional support allows us to expose more medical students to research experiences, and broadens the number of research settings and mentors with whom they may serve their fellowship. The new Program Director/Principal Investigator of this project, Donald McClain, MD, PhD, is a clinician-scientist who recently moved to WFSM. He has a long history of NIDDK-relevant funding and was a PI of a previous T35 program at the University of Utah. Dr. McClain will be advised by an experienced and diverse Executive Committee. The program is administratively based in the Wake Forest Clinical and Translational Science Institute (WF CTSI), which comprises the central research infrastructure for the institution and is newly augmented through a CTSA Hub award. The Medical Student Research Program is managed by the WF TSI's Education Director, Ms. Anita Pulley, a highly experienced medical educator who served in this role since 2008. In this program, we seek to promote and administer a training program that provides the most promising medical students at WFSM with a meaningful short-term research experience. To carry out this aim, we will identify and recruit talented medical students, and provide a training environment that imparts a high-quality short-term research experience, including a weekly seminar series focused on responsible conduct of research and incorporating student-led discussions in most sessions. The pool of faculty mentors assembled for this T35 proposal include Wake Forest's top researchers in diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and digestive diseases and kidney research. Each also is a committed and experienced research mentor who welcomes students into his or her research group. The capstone of the T35 experience is a Medical Student Research Day, with a prominent external speaker, student poster sessions, and a lunch and awards for the top posters. Importantly, students will be encouraged to prepare manuscripts for publication in the new student-run Wake Forest Journal of Science and Medicine, begun by medical students who were trained in this T35 program. Finally, we will evaluate each aspect of the program with feedback from trainees, mentors, and the Executive Committee. This feedback has been and will continue to be used to refine and improve the program in a continuous manner. We will build on the solid foundation established in the many years that this T35 program has enjoyed NIH support, and infuse new energy with a new PD/PI, and a renewed focus on translational, team-based research relevant to the mission of the NIDDK.
This training grant provides a summer experience in clinical and translational research for medical students at Wake Forest School of Medicine, with the goal of inspiring them to pursue research in their subsequent specialty training and careers as health care providers. By interacting with dedicated faculty mentors, we will give a selected group of talented students a first-hand experience in biomedical research, to continue creating new clinical and translational researchers for the future.
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