Institutional Career Development Core

The goal of the Vanderbilt-Meharry Edge for Scholars Career Development Core is to inspire careers dedicated to interdisciplinary translational science and to produce leaders in the field who are optimally prepared to guide and participate in ground-breaking transdisciplinary teams. We have a record of excellence preparing early career scholars. Overall 93% remain in academics, 96% in research, and 81% are federally funded as PIs; 55% are site PIs or co-investigators with 50% or more of effort for research. Their careers are thriving.

Current and prior awardees represent more than 20 disciplines and many clinical backgrounds including anesthesiology, chemistry, emergency medicine, hearing and speech, medicine, nursing, pediatrics, and thoracic surgery, with nearly even numbers of clinically trained and PhD-prepared scientists. We serve twelve trainees (6 grant; 6 internally funded). Program elements are purposefully designed for connecting, enlarging, and sustaining our community of translational scientists. Edge Scholars are grounded in the fundamentals of translational research, prepared to lead independent research programs, trained to effectively deploy innovative interdisciplinary approaches to attack and solve problems, and are committed to pursuing research that taps into the power of teams for driving breakthroughs.

Scholars are selected by competitive review of applications from a scientifically diverse pool of early career faculty. Training is individually tailored to the investigator in the context of structured interdisciplinary mentorship and is overseen by the PI (Bastarache) and Co-Director (Gordon). The environment is further enriched by myriad institutional resources that ensure our researchers flourish. In this proposal we add a science communications initiative and extend Pathways to all Scholars.

Pathways combine didactic, intensive, and experiential learning to consolidate competencies across many areas: Biostatistics & Epidemiology, Data Sciences, Clinical Context (for non-clinical scholars), Learning Healthcare System, Measurement Methods, and Technology Transfer & Innovation. Scholars form a mentor panel, participate in frequent work-in-progress groups and activities, receive formal evaluation each year, attend twice-monthly career development seminars with other K scholars, and are regularly exposed to case studies on responsible conduct of research, and rigor and reproducibility. Scholars access: 1) an array of cores; 2) biostatistics consultations; 3) manuscript groups; 4) technical editing; 5) studios with experts to vet scientific ideas, research designs, and aims; 6) robust intramural pilot and feasibility funding; and 7) grant writing resources including grant workshops, a library of funded grants, and mock study sections. Tools are in place to evaluate both scholars and mentors over time and to continuously enhance our program.

Further oversight is provided by the Advisory Committee and external site reviewers and we extensively share with other CTSAs. Combined, these efforts assure we carefully foster excellence in the next generation of translational scientists.

Grant Number: 5KL2TR002245-09
NIH Institute/Center: NIH
Principal Investigator: Julie Bastarache