I have focused a significant portion of my career on education at multiple levels, including undergraduate, graduate and professional education. In all three areas I have extensive experience teaching, directing courses and serving in an administrative role. In the medical education space, I was the Course Director for Medical Microbiology for several years and held leadership positions in medical education at UAB, including serving as Vice-Chair and Chair of the Integrated Medical Sciences Committee (2003-2006) and serving on the Medical Education Committee (MEC) Executive Committee (2003-2006). I also served as the Assistant and then Associate Director for the Medical Scientist Training Program at UAB (2005-2018). As a result, I have extensive experience in the combined MD/PhD training sphere. With respect to graduate education, once again I have extensive experience teaching, serving as a course director for multiple courses and more recently serving as the Graduate Biomedical Sciences Immunology Theme Director. Finally, my dedication to these efforts has consistently been recognized; I have received 9 awards for education over the years, including the UAB President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Dean’s Excellence in Teaching award, and I have been nominated for or awarded the Argus Award for teaching in the School of Medicine 15 times. My involvement in medical and graduate education has also included activities at the national level. In medical education, I have served on various committees at the National Board of Medical Examiners for the past 10 years, I served on the Program Committee for the Association of Medical School Microbiology and Immunology Chairs for 6 years; a group that focuses on medical education in Microbiology and Immunology. I am also actively involved with the International Association of Medical Science Educators and served on the Publication Committee for 13 years.
In addition to mentoring 24 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in my own laboratory and serving as the Director for the GBS Immunology Theme at UAB since 2015, I have been active at the national level in promoting numerous initiatives pertaining to graduate and postdoctoral education. I served as the Chair of the Training and Career Opportunities (TCO) Subcommittee at the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) for 10 years and was one of the early proponents for the adoption of Individual Development Plans (IDPs). Indeed, we conducted and published one of the earliest surveys regarding the use of IDPs in the biomedical sciences. During my time as Chair of the TCO, the subcommittee developed a web-based resource that highlighted all the career and professional development (CPD) activities offered by the member societies of FASEB. This resource was designed to foster awareness of and participation by graduate and postdoctoral trainees in these opportunities. In 2018 I, along with others from FASEB, organized a stakeholder workshop in partnership with the AAMC, HHMI, CGS and NIGMS to discuss the new NIGMS FOA for institutional training grants. This workshop focused on competency-based training and the use of logic models to develop evidence-based approaches to foster the objectives of the new T32 guidelines. I am a strong proponent of ongoing efforts to develop approaches to assess the acquisition of transferrable competencies by trainees because these competencies are essential to future career success whether that be in a research-intensive position or in a science-related career. Finally, as Chair of the TCO Subcommittee, I was actively engaged in studies to track trends in the number of postdoctoral fellows in the biomedical sciences and co-authored a paper that gained wide-spread national attention demonstrating the first consistent decline in postdoctoral fellows in the US. Outcomes for individuals who pursue postdoctoral training are currently a critical issue as there are trends showing that increasing numbers of postdoctoral trainees are choosing to pursue careers in industry and in science-related careers, with a concurrent decrease in the number of individuals who are choosing to remain in academia.
I was one of the founding Steering Committee members of a new effort to create a national center for the dissemination of evidence-based training and resources to promote career and professional development for trainees called Professional Development Hub (pd/hub) and I still serve on workgroups for this organization. As a Steering Committee member, I was part of a team that hosted a stakeholder meeting involving individuals from 9 stakeholder groups in collaboration with the NSF, Burroughs Wellcome Fund, ASBMB and HHMI. This meeting, which was held in the summer of 2019 at the HHMI Janelia Research Center, focused on identifying challenges, as well as actions to foster enhanced dissemination of resources and support for career and professional development for trainees. Most recently, I was elected to the Graduate Steering Committee of the GREAT Group at the AAMC, which focuses on PhD, postdoctoral and MD/PhD training issues.
At the international level, I have been involved with the Organization for PhD Education in Biomedicine and Health Sciences in the European System (ORPHEUS) through my former role as President of FASEB. ORPHEUS is an association of European biomedical and health science faculties and institutions that is committed to safeguarding the reputation of the PhD as a research degree and strengthening career opportunities for PhD graduates across Europe. I have attended their meetings and have been an invited speaker. Through these activities, I have had the opportunity to meet educational leaders from across Europe and I have had the opportunity to learn about the various challenges and opportunities that different countries experience. It is my goal to continue my relationship with ORPHEUS going forward and it would be my hope that my ongoing relationship with ORPHEUS will foster my ability to build and sustain partnerships with institutions across Europe.
At the undergraduate level, I created the Undergraduate Immunology Program (UIP) at UAB, which is unique in the United States based on its focus on educating students about the Immune system and its role in health and disease. The program was officially approved for the fall of 2016, and we welcomed our first class in the fall of 2017. The program grew to over 100 majors in 4 years and our fourth class will graduate this spring. This program has gained a significant amount of attention both locally and nationally. An important outcome associated with the creation of the UIP at UAB is the fact that graduates from this program are now applying to professional school and graduate school at UAB and elsewhere. For our most recent round of applications to the GBS Immunology Theme at UAB, 25% of the applicants we interviewed were graduates from the UIP. This is a clear demonstration of the fact that one of the benefits of creating such a program is that we have effectively developed a pipeline that will provide our graduate program with outstanding applicants who have a strong background in immunology and who have performed extensive undergraduate research, which is a requirement of the UIP.
In addition, my colleagues and I have published several papers highlighting the important role that immunology can play in meeting the calls for reforms in STEM education that are focused on promoting interdisciplinary learning. I am also one of the founding members of the national network called ImmunoReach. The mission of ImmunoReach is to promote immunology education at the undergraduate level across the United States. ImmunoReach recently received funding from the National Science Foundation, and we are currently in the process of expanding the network to foster the development of resources for education in immunology. As part of that effort, we are partnering with Cell Collective to develop computer modelling simulations to teach immunology to promote education in immunology using systems-based approaches.
