ICRE

Innovative and significant scientific advances often come from teams rather than individual scientists. But what makes a good team? And are there ways to make a good team great? In this module, we will cover the basics of team science so that you can answer these questions. Assembling the right team and reaping the full benefits of working with a team requires active planning and mindful management. We will discuss how to bring together the right mix of collaborators to enhance the success and impact of your research. We will also review best practices for building and maintaining positive and productive working relationships with diverse collaborators from different disciplines, professions, and social backgrounds.

Maximizing Mentoring

Mentoring is critical for career success, though many early career faculty struggle to develop robust mentoring relationships. In the Maximizing Mentoring module, you will identify the areas of expertise and qualities of your ideal mentor. You will then identify a mentor or team of mentors using a combination of strategies and resources, including the National Research Mentoring Network, NIH RePORTER, and the broader RCMI community. You will be coached on how to contact potential mentors and manage mentoring relationships.

Defining Your Research Question

Developing the right research question(s) requires as much skill as finding the right answer and yet is often neglected in academic research training. Albert Einstein once said: "If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes." In this module, you will learn how to define a significant research problem, articulate important, researchable questions, and use a conceptual framework to develop testable hypotheses based on your questions. We will discuss criteria to evaluate the significance of a problem and prioritize questions. By the end of this module you will be able to develop questions to guide the investigation of an impactful problem.

Medical Writing and Communication

Biomedical scientists must be able to present their work clearly and effectively in many written forms to successfully advance their careers. Yet important aspects of their scientific work are often poorly communicated or even obscured by ineffectively composed abstracts and peer-reviewed manuscripts. Don’t let poor writing skills or an uninformed approach to writing impede your professional development and academic promotion!

Effective Peer Reviewing

Scientific peer review is the evaluation of scholarly work by experts in the same field to enhance the quality of scholarship. Although the peer-review process and its relationship to professional success are critically important for all individuals pursuing biomedical careers at academic institutions, most early career faculty typically gain knowledge on these crucially important subjects on “the fly” and not through curricula designed to de-mystify many key aspects of peer review.

Launching Your Research Career

As you embark on your research careers, it is helpful to know what works and doesn’t work for you to facilitate your productivity. How are you doing with regards to work-life balance or is it really work-life integration? How do you avoid burnout? What kinds of obstacles might you encounter in pursuing your goals, and what strategies can you use to overcome them? This module focuses on self-discovery. Several experiential exercises will help you develop strategies for a successful research career.

Career Coaching

This course is a group coaching approach that uses topical primer material to initiate exploration of career management in facilitated group discussions and asynchronous reflective exercises. The topics cover three overall categories: (1) Foundational capacities underlying career management and professional development; (2) Self-awareness of strengths, interests, skills, and work values and their integration into to career management; (3) Expansion of your personal career management strategies through the exploration of multiple models and tools.

Instructors

Doris Rubio, PhD, University of Pittsburgh
Kyle Melin, PharmD, University of Puerto Rico
Leslie Hausmann, PhD, University of Pittsburgh
Steve Wendell, PhD, University of Pittsburgh
Mekeila Cook, PhD, Meharry Medical College
Latrice Rollins, PhD, MSW, Morehouse School of Medicine

Skills Sprints & Grant Writing

Scholars will engage in skill sprints that support their own work products, including manuscripts and grant applications. Skills sprints are open office hours where scholars have the opportunity to get personalized feedback from experts. Examples of skills sprints include study design and analysis, qualitative analysis, and life as a faculty member at a minority serving institution. Scholars will also participate in Ready, Aims, Fire and Shut Up & Write. These sessions provide structure and support for scholars writing or ready to start writing a grant with the ultimate goal of a successful grant submission. The weekly sessions will be on Mondays, 3-4:30 PM Eastern Time.

Instructors

Marie Norman, PhD, University of Pittsburgh
Kyle Melin, PharmD, University of Puerto Rico
Nina Smith, PhD, North Carolina Central University
Claire Ing, DrPH, University of Hawaii
Leslie Hausmann, PhD, University of Pittsburgh