Cancer Research Career Enhancement and Related Activities

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PROJECT SUMMARY: CANCER RESEARCH CAREER ENHANCEMENT As the only academic Cancer Center in its four-county catchment area (South Florida), the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center (Sylvester) has a unique responsibility to provide cancer-focused education and training across the career continuum. Sylvester’s Office of Education and Training (OET) coordinates these activities, ensuring they meet and exceed the needs of diverse learners, including students, pre- and postdoctoral trainees, faculty, and healthcare professionals. Kerry L. Burnstein, PhD, Associate Director for Education and Training leads the OET, overseeing the strategic development, coordination, and evaluation of these efforts with assistance from Sylvester leadership and administration, Sylvester’s External Advisory Board, and the Cancer Education Leadership Council, an internal advisory committee comprising University leaders in education, training, and mentoring. They work together to achieve the career enhancement priorities identified in Sylvester’s 2014-2018 Strategic Plan to 1) Build and sustain cancer research careers through stage-specific scientific and professional development; and 2) Provide broad, crosscutting career enhancement and educational programs that facilitate collaborative, interdisciplinary cancer research. While many of the Center’s education and training activities are new, for the past 12 years the Cancer Biology Graduate (CAB) Program has successfully educated dozens of promising graduate students in basic or translational cancer research. Sylvester trainees have been productive and engaged in impactful cancer research; of the 150 publications highlighted by Sylvester’s three Research Programs, trainees were first or second author on 50%. Recently, Sylvester members received five cancer-focused or related T32 training grants, an international U54 grant with Argentina that has a significant education and training component, and an NCI K12 Calabresi award, which will begin enrolling physician scientists in 2019. To extend the impact of these grants, Sylvester will fund an additional trainee for the T32s awards and the K12. Sylvester supports traditional career enhancement activities such as distinguished lecture series, annual retreats, trainee speaking opportunities, and novel educational strategies including a nurse practitioner oncology fellowship and opportunities for medical students to work in medically underserved communities with cancer control experts. Given the unparalleled multicultural and linguistic diversity of the catchment area, Burnstein and the OET work with the University of Miami Clinical and Translational Science Institute leadership and Sylvester’s Associate Director for Population Science and Cancer Disparity to ensure that trainees receive didactic and experiential instruction on how cancer risk and outcome vary across populations, allowing them to consider and possibly incorporate this knowledge into their research design. Together these efforts foster a pipeline of highly motivated healthcare professionals and researchers, uniquely trained to solve the complex cancer-related problems in their communities and beyond.