The George Washington University (GW) School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS) congratulates this year’s Emerging Scholars grant recipients. The Emerging Scholars program, housed within the Health Sciences Programs, provides pilot grant money to health sciences faculty and staff to support scholarly projects with a clear role in meeting the health sciences mission.
The goals of the program are to support collection of pilot data that have a high likelihood of securing significant extramural funding; boost research capacity and scholarly productivity; build productive inter-professional and mentoring partnerships within and beyond health sciences; promote effective use of technology in teaching and learning in classroom and online environments; test processes for delivering and monitoring high quality academic programs; and engage health sciences students, faculty and staff in service learning opportunities.
Congratulations to the three investigative teams whose pilot research projects were funded for 2014-15:
- “Assessing Collaboration Readiness: A Model for Understanding Individual Motivation and Deterrents to Team Collaboration (the Motivation Assessment for Team Readiness, Integration, and Collaboration MATRICx survey)” by Gaetano Lotrecchiano (PI), Trudy Mallinson, Lisa Schwartz, and Holly Falk-Krzesinski
- “Incidental Findings in Whole Genome Sequencing Research: Assessing the Roadblocks to Translation” by Shawneequa Callier (PI), Susan Swayze (GW Graduate School of Education and Human Development), and Melissa Goldstein (Milken Institute School of Public Health at GW)
- “Using Individualized Proximal Testing to Shape Learning and Remediation of Concepts” by Carol Rentas (PI) and Marcia Firmani
“This pilot grant program is important for health sciences staff and faculty who are working toward important discoveries, creating an environment of high quality teaching and learning, and bettering processes for implementation and evaluation of administrative and communication approaches,” said Mary Corcoran, Ph.D., associate dean for faculty development for health sciences and professor of clinical research and leadership at GW SMHS. “This will lead to the fulfillment of our mission and goals for health sciences.”
The Emerging Scholars program, which began in September 2012, awards two to four $10K, $25K or $50K grants each fiscal year. It has funded a total of eight pilot awards to date.
Funded projects have resulted in eight professional presentations and five published articles. Two grant applications are underway for 2015 submissions; one of those applications is being submitted to the National Science Foundation. The impact on teaching in the Health Sciences Programs has also been substantial. Innovative and tested educational products have been developed and tested as a result of the program, including an online clinical decision making interactive module using simulations to mimic physical therapy practice in an intensive care unit. Educational products from two Emerging Scholars projects have become a required part of the learning experience in two health sciences departments. In addition, several health sciences programs have built on these products for other educational purposes.
Letters of intent for the 2015-16 Emerging Scholars will be due on June 15, 2015.
