Post-Award Requirements

A SOMAS Faculty Awardee is to invite an outstanding student to collaborate on a ten-week summer research project. The selection of a properly prepared student will be key to a valuable summer experience for both the student and the Awardee. The SOMAS Program recommends that the following criteria be considered in choosing a student: students should be expected to have completed their introductory level courses in their major fields of science/mathematics and at least one advanced course in science, technology, engineering or mathematics. Particularly strong candidates will likely fit the following profile: highly motivated; intellectually sharp and curious; solid analytic abilities; strong desire and ability to conduct research; to think and work independently and as part of a team. As part of the in-house application procedure, the Awardee might consider having their candidates for the summer research position respond to a question such as the following: "Pose a hypothetical research question in Neuroscience that you find interesting. Why would other scientists find your question interesting? Describe how you would go about answering this question given reasonable constraints of time and funding."

The SOMAS Faculty Awardees are to have the students participate, as much as practicable, in the full range of experiences that constitute scientific investigation: proposing a question, hypothesis testing, designing an experiment, collecting and analyzing data, communicating the findings orally and in writing. At the completion of the summer research experience, each student will be expected:

The SOMAS Faculty Awardees and their students will be required to participate in the Professional Survival Skills and Ethics Workshop, and other appropriate workshops presented by federal agencies, held at the Society meeting. The Awardees will be required: 1) to attend grant-writing workshops to help them develop their "grantspersonship" skills to support their research programs at their home institutions; 2) to attend workshops emphasizing mentoring to enhance their skills in mentoring undergraduate students; and 3) to attend workshops on ethics in research to provide them with an ethical compass to help them navigate their research and teaching programs. The undergraduate students will be required to attend workshop sessions on 1) applying to graduate school, 2) graduate school life, 3) ethics in research, and 4) grant-writing to secure predoctoral awards.

Because PUI neuroscience faculty members often work in isolation, one goal of the Program is to facilitate the Awardees' ability to network with colleagues. To this end, the Program will hold small-group phone conferences (tentatively three labs per call) with SOMAS Faculty Awardees at least twice over the course of the summer to introduce one another and to cover topics relevant to the Awardees' research and the SOMAS Program. A morning prior to the Annual FUN Poster Session, SOMAS will host a breakfast meeting wherein the Awardees will be introduced to FUN's leadership and other invited guests. The breakfast meeting will be an opportunity for Awardees and their students to share their summer experiences and to promote camaraderie among the participants. Finally, efforts will be made to house the faculty and students in a single hotel. By designating a single hotel as "SOMAS Central," SOMAS faculty and students will have opportunity to interact informally and to share rooms.

Two major Program goals are: 1) to develop mentoring skills in the Faculty Awardees, and 2) to mentor the Faculty Awardees in their own teaching and research programs. In addition to requiring attendance at the Survival Skills Workshop on mentoring, Faculty Awardees will be provided with a copy of Adviser, Teacher, Role Model, Friend published by National Academy Press (1997) and the Council on Undergraduate Research booklet How To Mentor Undergraduate Researchers before the summer research program to further develop their mentoring skills. Student mentoring will be a topic covered on the phone-conference calls. The SOMAS faculty will be expected to guide, support, and accompany the SOMAS undergraduate student as much as practicable throughout the Society for Neuroscience Meeting. Of particular importance for the Program is the mentoring that each SOMAS Faculty Awardee will also receive throughout the SOMAS Program. Information on establishing a laboratory and a teaching/research career at a PUI as well as the CUR booklet How To Get Started In Research will be provided to each Faculty Awardee. The Association of Neuroscience Departments and Programs will help the SOMAS Program identify senior scientists who can mentor the SOMAS Awardees "from a distance" in grant-writing and research. Dr. Ramirez and his PUI colleagues will also mentor the Awardees as they learn to maneuver through PUI environments that emphasize teaching and view research as an extension of the teaching enterprise. SOMAS Faculty Awardees who submit a grant application to a funding agency before the next year's FUN Meeting will be invited to the subsequent SOMAS breakfast meeting to share their experiences, to serve as role models, and to bask in the glow of a successful submission effort! FUN has generously agreed to donate FUN T-Shirts to all Awardees.

A contract outlining fiduciary responsibilities of the SOMAS Program and Davidson College, the SOMAS Awardee and the host institution will be executed before funding is made available for the start of the summer research experience.