Summer Research Experience for Veterinary Students

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PROJECT SUMMARY Mississippi State University College of Veterinary Medicine (MSU-CVM) and Tuskegee University College of Veterinary Medicine (TUCVM) have established a partnership during the previous funding period of this T35 program that has been effective and which both institutions wish to continue. This will be the twentieth year of T35 funding for MSU-CVM and the fifth year for TUCVM, which had not previously had T35 funding. Our long- term goal in this T35 is to contribute to the national capacity of veterinarians in biomedical research by engaging and educating veterinary students in short-term research training early in their curriculum. In the previous funding period, we utilized the joint collaboration to train 46 and 11 veterinary students at MSU-CVM and TUCVM, respectively. The immediate goal of this application is to involve veterinary students in short-term research training opportunities supported by the Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA Short-Term Institutional Research Training Grants (T35) program. Again MSU-CVM and TUCVM propose to administer a Summer Research Experience (SRE) Program to recruit and train veterinary students in biomedical research. Another important goal of our program is to continue to increase diversity in the veterinary research workforce. Our program will provide summer research experiences for 12 veterinary students each year that have completed their freshman, sophomore, or junior year in an AVMA-accredited veterinary curriculum with 9 training positions at MSU-CVM and 3 training positions at TUCVM. The proposed training will consist of a continuous 12-week block of time in summer. The program will have three major components: 1) research conducted under the mentorship of an active faculty researcher, 2) educational activities in research, career development, and leadership, and 3) training and experience in preparation of scientific presentations. MSU-CVM and TUCVM will take several steps to ensure the program is jointly operated: both Colleges will participate in selecting trainees, educational activities will be jointly administered, and trainees will be assigned to MSU-CVM or TUCVM based on individual research interests. We have operated successfully in this manner in the previous funding period and propose to continue this collaboration in the next funding period, which this has been facilitated by outstanding institutional support from both MSU-CVM and TUCVM. Our colleges have unique research programs to give trainees experience in toxicology, epidemiology, translational research, genomics/functional genomics, computational biology, infectious disease, oncology, and food safety. One of the new initiatives we are proposing here are international SRE projects with shared mentorship between MSU-CVM and African institutions. This will be beneficial for our students and will also enhance diversity in biomedical research.