LSUHSC Summer Internship Program

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Abstract In order to effectively address the need for physician scientists, we propose an innovative, short-term research training program for pre-matriculating and matriculated 1st year medical students at LSUHSC-New Orleans. This Summer Internship Program (SIP) will support five students and is designed to cultivate their interest in research careers. We have identified at least 28 faculty mentors within three Centers of Excellence working in the areas of heart or lung diseases. Students will conduct intensive hands on clinical or basic science research for 10 weeks in the summer, working with LSU faculty. Those students who participate for a second summer (pre-matriculed students) will act as peer mentors to incoming participants, thus providing an important mentoring component to the program. The goals of this Summer Internship Program are: 1) to provide medical students with hands on research experience; 2) to facilitate one-on-one research mentoring; 3) to increase the participation in research by women and minority medical students at LSUHSC; 4) to provide summer interns with the career skills they will need to succeed in academic medicine. In addition to their research experience, students also attend a weekly seminar and a didactic training series on: lab safety, responsible conduct of research, HIPPA, writing abstracts and presenting research results (oral and poster presentations). At the end of the summer, students will present either an oral or a poster presentation; they will be supported to present their data at national or regional meetings as well. We will work to recruit at least 20% underrepresented minority participants, reflecting the demographics of the LSU medical school class. In order to determine the impact the program has on individual participants, summer interns will complete Goals Attainment Scales as well as Research Self Efficacy (RSE) surveys. RSE is a major predictor of career choice and performance. We will also conduct formative and summative evaluations concerning the entire program, in order to determine what changes may be needed. Lastly, working with the Office of Student Affairs, we will implement a career tracking system to measure the long-term impact of their summer experience on career choices and research participation, which will quantify the long-term impact of this program. This program will create a whole generation of new physician researchers who are prepared to conduct biomedical research in Louisiana.