Dental Research Intensive Program for Undergradate Students - ______________________________________________________________________________________________ Summary This application will establish an undergraduate summer research program that focus on dental research. The goal of this program is to provide courses for research skill development, gain exposure to research on dental/oral related research that will enhance the ability and confidence to investigate oral/dental related research projects and build a pipeline for dedicated dental school students. Building on our longstanding institutional research training experience and based on our excellent outcome measures, we are confident that our trainees will be highly successful in getting a meaningful research experience that will keep them interested in dental profession including dental research and/or DDS programs. The focus of this summer research program will be to develop and sustain this training program that will provide summer research that involves a didactic and hand-on 12 week research program for undergraduate students, followed by summarizing and publish the project through the CATs program. We remain devoted to train a cadre of highly skilled, interactive undergraduate students (including from underrepresentative minority populations) who can successfully address the new opportunities in dentistry and become a part of the future academic faculty in US dental schools. There is currently an estimated need for more than 400 dental faculty and clinician-scientists to maintain the high quality of dental education and research at US Dental Schools. A pivotal point in the development of dental scientists is the decision to pursue research training early on and keep building on this experience. This is a compelling predictor of whether an individual will stay in academics or move into private practice after graduating from the dental school. Through this training program we hope to address the critical need for an established and structured pathway at UT dental school that develops research competencies of these early career students (future dentists), especially those that aspire to leading academic research careers. We are confident that this exceptional multi-interdisciplinary program and training environment will improve the next generation of dentist. Highly motivated and dedicated students will be selected for research training and will participate in a series of core courses and experiences that are integrated with programs across the Dental School and the campus at large. Importantly, sponsored activities identified here will strongly promote collaboration, and networking among all trainees and get them excited about that will provide future clinicians/scientist that are interested in academic research. In addition, by formally developing, a tracking and 360 evaluation plans will continuously improve our training program, that will provide an optimal environment for research training of new dental scientists.
