Cal State Fullerton MARC U-STAR Program Supplement - Development and Implementation of an Online Scientific Communication Workshop

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ABSTRACT The Cal State Fullerton MARC U-STAR Program proposes the development and implementation of an online Scientific Communication Workshop (SCW) that will be targeted to STEM majors who are conducting independent undergraduate research and are interested in pursuing graduate degrees. We currently offer a four-semester face-to-face (FtF) workshop to our MARC trainees, but would like to build on this FtF course and develop an online two-semester workshop that is more broadly available to students at Cal State Fullerton (CSUF), as well as students at other California State University (CSU) campuses. The main goals in our supplement application are to 1) develop a two- semester online SCW for STEM majors conducting independent research and interested in pursuing graduate training, 2) offer the online course within a year of completing its development and provide it as a regular course offering, and 3) assess the effectiveness of the online course in advancing student communication skills. We will present an overview of our online course at the 2021 NIGMS Training, Workforce Development, and Diversity Program meeting. In order to develop an ADA- compliant online course series, we will build and certify the SCW through the Quality MattersTM program. The online SCW will then be evaluated by experts at CSUF and certified nationally by Quality Matters. Students at CSUF will be able to register for the online course using the student portal, while those elsewhere in the CSU system can register through CSU Fully Online. Both the Department of Biological Science and the College of Natural Science and Mathematics at CSUF are committed to the institutionalization of the online workshop as a yearly course offering. The two- semester online workshop will expand on two main goals associated with our MARC program – 1) placing graduating MARC scholars in respected health-oriented (biomedical or behavioral) doctoral programs and 2) ensuring their success in a specified Ph.D. program (see parent grant T34GM008612). Through the online SCW, we will be able to prepare an even larger number of young, skilled scientists for doctoral study who can contribute to solving immediate and long term health- related concerns in our nation.