GW’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS) recently granted pilot funding to three investigative teams as part of its Emerging Scholars Program. The program, which is designed to support scholarly projects undertaken by health sciences faculty and staff, focuses on academic advancements, service-learning opportunities, and professional and mentoring partnerships inside and outside of the school.
“This pilot grant program is important for health sciences staff and faculty who are working toward important discoveries, creating an environment of high-quality teaching and learning, and bettering processes for implementation and evaluation of administrative and communication approaches,” said Mary Corcoran, Ph.D., associate dean for faculty development for health sciences and professor of clinical research and leadership. “This will lead to the fulfillment of our mission and goals for health sciences.”
The winning projects and the principal investigators for the 2014–15 year are:
- “Assessing Collaboration Readiness: A Model for Understanding Individual Motivation and Deterrents to Team Collaboration (the Motivation Assessment for Team Readiness, Integration, and Collaboration MATRIx survey),” by Gaetano Lotrecchiano, Ph.D., assistant professor of clinical research and leadership;
- “Incidental Findings in Whole Genome Sequencing Research: Assessing the Roadblocks to Translation,” by Shawneequa Callier, J.D., assistant professor of clinical research and leadership; and
- “Using Individualized Proximal Testing to Shape Learning and Remediation of Concepts,” by Carol Rentas, M.Ed., assistant professor of clinical research and leadership.
The program, which began in 2012, awarded each team $10,000, $25,000, or $50,000. To date, the program has funded a total of eight pilot awards.
Emerging Scholars projects have resulted in eight professional presentations and five published articles. Educational tools developed and tested with pilot funds have included an online clinical decision-making interactive module that uses simulations to mimic physical therapy practice in an intensive care unit.
