6 minute read
IGP Curriculum
from BRET 360º
Madhvi Venkatesh, PhD
Barbara Fingleton, PhD
By Sarah E. Glass, graduate student One essential component of a graduate student’s training is the first-year coursework that fosters skills needed to be an independent researcher, such as critical analysis of literature, hypothesis generation, and understanding of the current state of the field. In the spring of 2020, a committee comprised of faculty members from each graduate program, students, and education experts led by Dr. Kathy Gould was created to modify the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program (IGP) curriculum to ensure the best education for graduate trainees.
As a recommendation of the committee, Dr. Madhvi Venkatesh was hired as a new faculty member to help implement, coordinate, and evaluate these changes and to continue making improvements. Madhvi was a perfect fit for the role as her post-graduate experience included a curriculum fellowship at Harvard Medical School (HMS), where she managed and improved the Molecular Biology and Biochemistry coursework for first-year biomedical graduate students. In this role, she focused not only on developing the curriculum but also on improving students’ sense of belonging in graduate school and in the biomedical field. Her success in the Curriculum Fellows Program led Madhvi to become the Associate Director of Graduate Education in the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School.
Upon her move to Vanderbilt as an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry, Madhvi entered the role of Curriculum Director for the IGP. She worked collaboratively with a host of faculty and the IGP Director, Dr. Barbara Fingleton, to refine and implement the new IGP curriculum for the 2021-2022 academic year, and she is assessing its impact for further improvement in the next iteration. The new curriculum includes three thematic segments in the first semester coursework that integrate primary literature paper discussions and lectures taught by faculty in their fields of expertise. The third segment, which has garnered the most enthusiasm from students, is called “The Block.” This section of the curriculum was created to introduce first-year students to an important part of their dissertation work, creating a proposal that will answer a scientific question. Using the explosion of coronavirus research that has been generated due to the pandemic, the curriculum committee and teaching team developed a model whereby students could follow their passions while learning research skills. The students were given plenary lectures and review articles about coronaviruses to give them a foundation of knowledge and were then encouraged to use primary literature articles related
Spring 2022
to their interests to identify an unanswered question in the field. The students wrote a proposal detailing the rationale behind their study, outlining a specific research question, and offering at least two experimental strategies that could be employed to investigate the question. These reports were reviewed by peers, much like what occurs in the grant writing process, and were revised. This experience was a fantastic learning opportunity and a preface to the students designing their own dissertation research projects in the labs that they join.
An important addition to the new curriculum has been the introduction of coursework in Python programming and quantitative biology to prepare IGP students for the increasingly computational nature of the biomedical research enterprise. During the fall semester, students were introduced to programming fundamentals, which they then were able to apply during the spring for analyzing single-cell RNA sequencing data and creating and interpreting biological models. The spring semester quantitative biology course also included a project-based section where students could use their programming skills to write a Python script relevant to their research interests. Students found this section particularly helpful in understanding how programming could contribute to their research and many chose to create code to automate some part of the data management or analysis in one of their rotation projects. As the newest part of the curriculum, Madhvi thinks that “the programming and computational components will take some iteration to refine, but they provide a
very important set of skills that will allow our students to excel in today’s multidisciplinary research environment.” Yet another improvement to the IGP curriculum has been the formalization of programming focused on wellness and professional development, called “Becoming a Scientist.” Seminars regarding resiliency, how to give a scientific presentation, and diversity and inclusion are followed up on with engaging small-group discussions and activities to put what was learned into practice. A highlight of this programming was the utilization of a video game, called Fair Play, that traces the progress of a student of color through his STEM graduate training. Through the video game, students were taught about unconscious biases and stereotypes that can influence a student’s success in STEM. Madhvi believes that graduate-level coursework “has a unique opportunity to promote equity by helping everyone to develop the skills that they need.”
Overall, Madhvi’s tireless work towards curriculum reform alongside enthusiastic faculty leaders of each curriculum component and with 48 other participating faculty has resulted in a program of study where students can grow as researchers and scientists. While there are still constant improvements that can be made, these changes are a step in the right direction for the training of the newest generation of scientific leaders.
“The Block has taught me how to be more of an independent scientist. I usually have trouble choosing a topic for a big project like this, so this project was definitely good practice for me. I did a lot of literature search and learned about a few different areas of COVID-19 research including viral entry, intracellular signaling and immunology, before settling on my topic. After choosing to focus on the complement system’s response to SARS-CoV-2, I was able to refine my literature search on Pub Med and find the necessary information I needed to write my draft. I also learned how to navigate bioRxiv and medRxiv to find new and exciting pre-prints. The peer review process was especially helpful and reminded me of how important it is to receive feedback from my friends. The most rewarding part of the block was watching my initial draft evolve and grow into a final draft that I was proud to submit.” “I feel like I’ve gotten better at digging through the literature to find the logical support to my argument. This, in conjunction with my rotation, definitely helped me to learn to sort through the available information, even if I don’t understand everything.”
The most rewarding part was feeling accomplished for writing a short proposal. This was my first time identifying a question in research that remained unanswered. This whole project was incredibly helpful for my development as a scientist. I was definitely lacking this aspect of research, arguably the most important aspect, and I finally felt like I thought of something completely on my own.”
“I enjoyed the recent coursework because it challenged me to think like a scientist, critically reviewing recent papers, combing through to find gaps and asking daring questions about SARSCoV2 that have not been addressed. I learned to critically evaluate recent work, form hypotheses, gauge when I go ‘down rabbit holes,’ take breaks and pay close attention to details.”
