This is the third in a four-part series about the Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy.
The Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy is developing a broad initiative to create a curriculum that integrates policy with the genome sciences at the undergraduate, graduate and professional levels.
“This is ambitious and something that no other institution is attempting,” said Huntington Willard, director of IGSP. “It is part of what makes Duke’s efforts to address the Genome Revolution so different.”
In order to further a genomics-themed curriculum, IGSP will fund an initiative with a Roadmap grant, which the National Institutes of Health gives for initiatives that seek to engage in nontraditional research. The institute has hired Julianne O’Daniel to hold the new position of director of education and planning.
In doing so, IGSP hopes to take this initiative beyond basic science research and bring it to all Duke students, from the first day they step on campus until the day they leave.
“It is such a hot topic—it’s all over the media, and it has so much potential,” said O’Daniel, who previously worked as a clinical genetic counselor and trained Taiwanese nurses in genetics. “Genomics is a sexy science. It needs to be looked at from different perspectives.”
Existing courses in genome science and policy used to be department-specific, but they will now be run by IGSP as a coordinated effort to integrate various schools of thought. “Now it’s just like a menu,” Willard said. “There is no sequence. We want a continuum of classes to offer students.”
IGSP has already begun this process with the implementation of their own FOCUS program called “The Genome Revolution and its Impact on Science, Health and Society” for this year’s freshman class. Robert Thompson, dean of Trinity College, saw this as a natural addition to the “Making Meaning of Genomic Information”, a separate program that was sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
“This whole initiative is a tremendous opportunity to enhance the undergraduate experience,” Thompson said. “We are an elite research institute, and we have all these great schools. We just need to build connections with IGSP to create an infrastructure for the undergraduates.”
After freshman year, students need courses that would logically follow the introduction to genomics provided by the gateway FOCUS program, administrators said. Certificate programs are now in the early stage of development with courses targeted at different levels of education. Undergraduate classes will be less specialized and offer more paths for study, while graduate and professional courses will be more technical and focused on specific fields. Each program will consist of a core curriculum with several electives.
Thompson will work with faculty this spring to devise a sequence of courses and hopes to have a proposal ready for approval by next year. Similar plans are underway for the graduate certificate programs, and those students will have a greater ability to take courses that cut across all the schools, due to the nature of their degree process.
The introduction of mini-courses on genome sciences is also impending. These will focus on the training of clinicians and researchers to help them “learn the language” of genome sciences, O’Daniel said, stressing the need for practitioners to understand the research published and how to apply it to their patients. It will also help those who create policy understand the basic science behind their work, he said.
“Education is really key for IGSP,” O’Daniel said. “It is a platform for scholars to exchange ideas about the genomics revolution and to find the best way to present this material to society.”
In addition to more courses, the administration hopes to expand mentored research opportunities, lab experiences and summer jobs using the Roadmap grant. “We have the resources. We just need to make sure they are available to as many students as possible,” Thompson said.
Robert Cook-Deegan, director of two IGSP centers, sees these endeavors as capstone programs. “At this point, we have students who are interested, but we need to offer them opportunities like field trips and internships to culminate their genome science education,” he said.
O’Daniel will directly work to establish new training programs within the IGSP and emphasize the big picture across the campus. She will find out where the gaps are located and how to best fill them on the undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate levels. This will not only prevent duplication of courses and programs but help develop those at the intersection of various fields.
“We’re thinking big here. We want not only to contribute to degree programs on campus but also offer series of other training opportunities off-campus, jointly with other key partners, both nationally and perhaps internationally,” Willard said. “Whatever it is within genome sciences and policy, we want people to want to come to Duke for their training. Duke should be somewhere at the top of their list.”
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