Rebecca Lopez

Educational programs at PSOM are very effective in reaching individual groups of trainees, such as those in Biomedical Graduate Studies (BGS), or in the Masters and Certificates program (MaC), or Medical Student Trainees (MSTP), or those in Undergraduate Medical Education (UME).  What is missing are opportunities for cross-fertilization among participants in these programs.  As a consequence, there are skills, experiences, and perspectives that are conveyed well to one program’s trainees, but that are virtually unsampled by the others.

The Directors of the educational programs listed above have established a student-led initiative to begin to address this deficit, and we want to identify a BGS student to join the effort.  

This student-led initiative will convene this summer, and its charge is to:

• Identify existing opportunities from individual programs that should be re-tooled to enable synergy across the training programs.
• Conceive of new opportunities for collaborative offerings that can address unmet needs in areas such as ethics, communication & presentation skills, grant writing, service learning, wellness, etc.

Length of Internship: 6-8 weeks, Summer 2021
Stipend: $3000.00
Eligibility: All current PhD students in good standing; you will require permission from your advisor (akin to a TA-ship). 

Students in project will be mentored by directors and faculty from the UME, MaC, and BGS/, MSTP programs. The first half of the project will be to work with mentors, who will help identify existing opportunities for collaboration, and also identify unmet needs. During this period, the group will begin creating an educational offering to reach across all programs. During the second half of the project the students will work together to create an integrated report, including a more well-developed proposal for robust programming.

How to apply:

Deadline: noon, March 22nd. Submit a single PDF attachment to SVDeanMedEd@upenn.edu, single-spaced 12-point Times New Roman font, 1-inch margins with the following components:

1. PDF file name: “Last Name_BGS.MaC.UME”
2. Within the document, include:
   1. Your Name
   2. A brief bio, emphasizing why the project appeals to you (max 500 words)

Strong consideration will be given to students that indicate interest in the following:

1. Love of research, data gathering, synthesis
2. Promote collaboration among students from other schools and programs, and promote interactions between students with faculty
3. Experience in Education/Curriculum Development is a bonus

The selected student will be notified on or near April 1st.  If selected, you must commit to the project within 5 days of notification.

Some extra detail about the Summer Initiative:

Program Mentors:
UME: Jennifer Kogan, MD, with Rosalyn Schorr, and a MaC mentor depending on Master’s specialization.
BGS: Stephen DiNardo, PhD, with Judy Jackson.

A final product is expected at the end of the Summer in the form of:

1. An outline for a planned curriculum; 
2. A companion presentation, to be used internally to foster discussions on the best path forward, and which must include summarized data representing the extant opportunities, identified needs / gaps, and proposed mechanisms to address those gaps by crafting synergizing opportunities among UME, BGS, MSTP and MaC trainees.