Trainee Exchange Programs
One of the innovative strengths of the CGREAL's training program
will be the opportunities afforded by our unique collaboration
with two minority-serving institutions: Howard University in
Washington, DC and Fisk University in Nashville.
The CGREAL will sponsor a Trainee Exchange Program in collaboration
with Dr. Charles Rotimi of Howard University's National Human
Genome Center. The Center will host selected post-doctoral and
pre-doctoral students from Howard, and our trainees will have
the opportunity to spend time at the National Human Genome Center
under Dr. Rotimi's tutelage.
Trainees traveling in either direction will have a variety
of experiences available to them, ranging from week-long intensive
independent studies and six-week research rotations to summer
field-work trips and full semester courses. Trainees coming
from Howard to CWRU, for example, will be able to join one of
our six research groups to collaborate in ongoing studies, or
propose and conduct small pilot projects of their own - for
example, designing an informed consent process for a genetic
epidemiological study they would like to conduct as part of
their scientific training at Howard. Trainees going to Howard
from CWRU, conversely, will have opportunities to learn firsthand
about the ethical and social dimensions of research initiatives
such as Howard's Genetic Research on the African Diaspora (GRAD)
and the international Haplotype Mapping Project, and the approaches
that the experienced investigators at Howard take to these challenges.
Dr. Patricia Marshall will coordinate the CWRU end of this training
program, and Dr. Charles Rotimi will have the reciprocal responsibilities
at Howard. Drs. Marshall and Rotimi, already long-time research
collaborators, are wonderful role models for this effort. They
will work with the Director of the National Human Genome Center
at Howard, Dr. Georgia Dunston, and the CGREAL director to select
and mentor candidates for this exchange from amongst our trainees.
We anticipate, for example, that some of the international post-doctoral
fellows from the CWRU Fogarty Center Fellowships program will
be particularly interested in this exchange opportunity.
CWRU has also recently established a significant partnership
with Fisk University, a leading historically minority-serving
liberal arts institution (cf. Appendix I) . This partnership
will provide a solid foundation for the development of similar
exchange programs for minority graduate students in the humanities
and social sciences, as well as an excellent outreach opportunity
for recruiting minority undergraduate students into the various
graduate programs related to the Center.
|
