This proposal requests additional support to create coursework that is part of an integrated leadership and career development curriculum for Harvard graduate students in the biomedical sciences. This curriculum is part of the portfolio of programming for the Scientific Citizenship Initiative (SCI), a new effort at Harvard that aims to equip scientists with the diverse set of skills and perspectives they need for successful public engagement within and outside of academic research careers. We will collaborate with the Chemical Biology Ph.D. program on pilot programming, which will be available to their students as well as others. The full curriculum will consist of 3 components: a short bootcamp course, a full-semester course, and an experiential learning component. This supplement will be used to create the bootcamp course. The bootcamp is an intensive 2-week workshop focused on a simulation of key decisions surrounding development of a life sciences technology in three contexts: academia, entrepreneurship/venture capital, and public policy/legislation. Careers in biomedical sciences increasingly call for a broadened set of skills, which are needed both within and outside academic research environments. Additionally, there is an increased demand from funding agencies for academic researchers to articulate the broader impacts of their work, requiring them to connect curiosity-driven research with existing needs and social issues. This curriculum will broaden scientific training at Harvard to better prepare students for scientific careers in a variety of settings.
The objective of the Chemical Biology graduate program is to train an outstanding pool of graduate students to carry out independent research at the forefront of chemical biology, using concepts and experimental approaches drawn from many areas of chemistry and biology. It is our hope and expectation that these graduate students will emerge from their training to be among the scientific leaders of the future. The training program offers an extraordinary range of training opportunities in chemical biology.
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