Project Summary (2014-2020)

The specific aims of the Training Core are to:

1. Provide high quality interdisciplinary biomedical and environmental science training, education and mentoring experiences to diverse trainees at the institutions participating in PROTECT;
2. Extend applicable PROTECT training experiences to the greater SRP community; and
3. Serve as the coordination point for training activities with, and trainee participation in, the Community Engagement and Research Translation Cores (CEC and RTC, respectively).

During the previous program funding, the Core developed an effective Training Core program that is providing opportunities/experiences for the Core trainees to: 1) understand and integrate the problems and concepts of health impacts assessment of contaminated systems, contaminant detection, fate and transport, exposure routes, remediation, and information management; 2) develop competence in the applied methods underlying research core activities; and 3) advance their technical, professional and personal skills/knowledge/attitudes to motivate and prepare them for successful careers in these fields.

For the current period, the Training Core also: 4) provides opportunities for trainees to participate in and contribute to CEC and RTC activities; 5) promotes the awareness of environmental health and environmental science/engineering fields as career pathways to underrepresented populations through recruitment activities; and 6) serves as a resource for the RTC for training opportunities for the greater SRP community.

PROTECT has been successful in creating innovative training activities that extend to the greater SRP community, and the program has demonstrated its leadership in promoting more robust and meaningful training experiences. By using a differentiated training model, the Training Core impacts students across a wide spectrum of experience, discipline and educational levels. Senior research personnel (faculty, research scientists, etc.) contribute to this core via an advisory group to develop new activities and provide feedback on existing offerings, informal training opportunities, seminar and workshop offerings, field and laboratory experiences, and mentoring. A systematic assessment and evaluation program feeds into a continuous quality improvement process to help the project team to understand, and modify as necessary, the interactions between the education/training activities and the research cores.