This application requests funds to establish and support a Short Term Institutional Research Training program at Albany Medical College, designed as a 3-month program to expose 6-8 medical students, early in their training, to the excitement and challenges of a research career. The training program will serve as a natural entry into an existing research track at Albany Medical College and will keep students engaged in research for all 4 years in medical school. Students will be equipped to pursue a career that includes basic science research while obtaining valuable experience and training in the Cardiovascular Sciences. The long-term goal is to increase the size of the workforce of physician scientists engaged in biomedical research, especially in those areas important to the mission of the NHLBI. Special recruiting efforts are designed to attract the best minds from the medical student classes of the Albany Medical College (with emphasis on recruiting Minority students). Students will spend 3 months in a laboratory doing meaningful, authentic, innovative research on a project specially designed for them, with the active mentoring of an investigator who is NIH-funded, who has sufficient time and inclination to serve as a mentor for a medical student, and who has previous experience mentoring students with little or no training in laboratory research. Students will spend the vast majority (more than 90%)of their summer doing research, but will also have Enrichment Activities including safety training, training in the care and use of animals, extensive training on issues of the responsible conduct of research, a special mini-course emphasizing the relationship between laboratory investigation and clinical interventions, weekly colloquia in the Center for Cardiovascular Sciences, three types of Teaching to Learn-Learning to Teach sessions designed to develop their communication skills, a special seminar series presented by physician scientists, and a writing component to develop scientific writing skills. The Program Director will provide extensive tracking and evaluation of the students and the program, making adjustments as necessary, and providing summative evaluations for review by an Oversight Committee that administers all aspects of the program.
