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SPINES: A Model for Scientific Excellence, Mentoring & Professional Development

00:00:12.22 Hello. My name is Keith Trujillo.
00:00:15.16 I'm Professor and Director of the Office for Training, Research and Education
00:00:19.09 in the Sciences
00:00:20.25 at California State University San Marcos.
00:00:22.15 I'm also a Co-Director of the Summer Program in
00:00:25.05 Neuroscience, Ethics and Survival
00:00:27.02 at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
00:00:28.28 I'm here to talk to you about SPINES.
00:00:30.26 This is a course, a summer course,
00:00:33.21 focused on scientific excellence, professional development,
00:00:36.10 and lifelong mentoring to increase diversity in the sciences.
00:00:40.27 Now, before I give details about SPINES,
00:00:42.24 I want to talk about a problem,
00:00:44.18 and this problem has to do with disparities
00:00:47.00 in those performing research at the highest levels
00:00:49.14 in neuroscience and related areas.
00:00:51.21 As we know from many studies,
00:00:53.22 individuals from underrepresented minority groups
00:00:55.28 are severely underrepresented in the sciences,
00:00:58.23 and this is illustrated in this data from the National Science Foundation.
00:01:02.08 If you take a look, you can see that
00:01:05.13 individuals who received neuroscience doctorates in 2012
00:01:07.13 from Hispanic backgrounds...
00:01:09.04 there were only 59 individuals who received those doctorates.
00:01:12.21 In addition, only 33 people
00:01:16.07 from African American or a black background
00:01:18.17 received a PhD in neuroscience during that year.
00:01:20.24 And remarkably, there were no individuals
00:01:23.27 from American Indian or Alaskan Native background.
00:01:26.24 And this compares to almost 600 individuals
00:01:29.28 from the majority, white population.
00:01:31.19 When we take a look at the overall demographics,
00:01:34.15 less than 10% of PhDs in neuroscience
00:01:37.07 went to underrepresented minorities during that year,
00:01:39.24 and this hasn't changed in the subsequent years,
00:01:42.16 and we don't see it changing significantly going forward.
00:01:46.13 When we look at the US population as a whole,
00:01:49.26 we see greater than 30% of that population
00:01:53.01 is from these under... same underrepresented minority groups.
00:01:55.21 And soon, that population is going to exceed
00:01:59.05 50% in the pop... in the United States.
00:02:01.23 So, this is a significant disparity
00:02:04.22 that's only going to grow larger as we go forward.
00:02:07.03 And this problem escalates up the academic ladder.
00:02:09.13 As we look to associate professors and professors,
00:02:11.22 and those people doing science at the highest levels,
00:02:13.27 we see that less than 5% -- significantly less than 5% --
00:02:17.29 are from the same demographic groups.
00:02:20.07 And so, we know from a lot of educational research
00:02:23.04 that increased opportunities, mentoring, and professional development
00:02:25.25 will help with this issue,
00:02:27.29 and that's what SPINES is about.
00:02:31.04 SPINES was founded by Dr. Joe Martinez and Dr. James Townsel
00:02:34.29 more than 25 years ago, and since then
00:02:38.04 we've got 25 years of success in the program.
00:02:39.24 And we want to acknowledge the important support offered by
00:02:41.15 the National Institute of Mental Health
00:02:43.03 for those 25 years of the SPINES course.
00:02:46.18 SPINES is offered at the Marine Biological Laboratory,
00:02:49.06 which is an incredible scientific community located in Cape Cod.
00:02:52.29 It's... you can see from this picture
00:02:56.09 the beautiful setting for the Marine Biological Laboratory.
00:02:59.25 But that doesn't show the incredible scientific wealth
00:03:03.29 at the Institute.
00:03:05.16 There's more than 56 Nobel Laureates
00:03:08.01 who have come through as researchers
00:03:10.26 or course directors or faculty for the courses
00:03:14.27 here at the MBL;
00:03:16.17 124 Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators;
00:03:18.20 and 241 members of the National Academy of Sciences.
00:03:22.13 So, it's an incredible scientific community,
00:03:24.17 unrivaled in the world.
00:03:27.12 So, getting to SPINES and what it's about, it's...
00:03:31.00 it goes for four weeks, from mid-June to mid-July in the summer.
00:03:34.12 We can offer support to up to 20 students each year --
00:03:37.14 PhD students, postdoctoral fellows, and early career faculty.
00:03:40.13 And it's a full fellowship program.
00:03:42.05 All costs, including travel, housing, and meals
00:03:44.27 at the Marine Biological Laboratory,
00:03:46.25 are covered, so students don't need to pay anything out of pocket
00:03:49.03 in order to attend SPINES.
00:03:52.04 Now, I'm gonna go over the curriculum of SPINES,
00:03:54.29 but keep in mind that this is a constantly changing curriculum.
00:03:56.29 We want to keep up with the latest in scientific understanding,
00:03:59.24 the latest in understanding of professional development,
00:04:02.18 and so we change the course constantly.
00:04:04.04 We evolve with the changes in science.
00:04:06.14 So, what I'm gonna share with you may change tomorrow,
00:04:09.06 but here's what we offer today.
00:04:12.00 So, we offer, very importantly,
00:04:13.26 knowledge and skills around professional development,
00:04:15.16 including networking skills.
00:04:17.07 We want our students to take advantage of the incredible networking available
00:04:20.19 here at the Marine Biological Laboratory,
00:04:22.12 and so we offer them some training and help
00:04:25.15 in developing their networking skills.
00:04:28.00 We provide a lot of mentoring, and we train the students in effective mentoring.
00:04:31.28 We include sessions on scientific writing,
00:04:34.08 critical reading,
00:04:36.01 and we work with the students to create
00:04:38.18 effective scientific presentations.
00:04:41.05 We also work with students on navigating a scientific career,
00:04:44.03 how to succeed in a career in neuroscience,
00:04:47.11 how to select a postdoc position or a faculty position,
00:04:49.26 and how to obtain grants and fellowships,
00:04:52.05 because these are so important to success in the field.
00:04:55.09 In addition, because of the populations we work with,
00:04:57.24 we discuss diversity issues,
00:04:59.19 and we offer a lot of training and skills development around that,
00:05:04.01 including health disparities, diversity in science,
00:05:06.11 and succeeding as an underrepresented minority scientist.
00:05:12.04 We offer significant work in mentoring and networking,
00:05:15.07 and we have exceptional role models and mentors
00:05:17.19 who come to the course to teach.
00:05:19.00 The majority of the faculty we've selected for SPINES
00:05:21.16 are successful scientists from under...
00:05:23.21 from underrepresented minority groups.
00:05:25.21 We also include a good number of faculty
00:05:27.20 who are not an underrepresented minority,
00:05:29.23 but each of these have a strong record
00:05:33.09 in mentoring underrepresented minority students
00:05:35.14 and have even received recognition and awards
00:05:38.00 for their work in the area.
00:05:41.10 Students who come to SPINES become lifelong members
00:05:44.27 of the SPINES family,
00:05:46.27 and we truly believe that this is a family.
00:05:48.07 We work... we work hard to create a family atmosphere for SPINES,
00:05:52.05 and so the students... we...
00:05:54.05 we stick with them for their lifelong careers
00:05:56.18 and professional development.
00:05:59.18 In addition, the work that we offer in mentoring
00:06:03.28 supplements and extends the mentoring
00:06:05.13 they receive at their home institution.
00:06:07.01 When we look at their home institutions,
00:06:08.25 we know that there are very few individuals
00:06:10.26 from underrepresented minority groups there,
00:06:12.15 so the... the mentoring that we can offer
00:06:17.11 from individuals from their own demographic background
00:06:19.16 really helps with their professional development.
00:06:21.09 And then, we've recently instituted
00:06:23.17 a formal extended mentoring program.
00:06:25.12 And this extended mentoring program
00:06:27.09 allows us to work with the students
00:06:29.25 after they leave SPINES
00:06:31.27 to assure that they don't fall into difficulties
00:06:34.02 as they navigate their way through a scientific career.
00:06:37.26 And of course, as I mentioned earlier, networking is critical,
00:06:40.22 and it's so essential at the Marine Biological Laboratory.
00:06:43.15 There's unrivaled opportunities for networking at the MBL,
00:06:46.26 with all of the prominent scientists here.
00:06:52.12 Now, one thing that we take advantage of here at the MBL, also,
00:06:56.20 is the tremendous neuroscience community that's here.
00:06:59.05 And so, we offer a lot of
00:07:03.05 knowledge development and skills in neuroscience.
00:07:05.08 Despite its name -- the Marine Biological Laboratory --
00:07:06.28 there is significant neuroscience that occurs here.
00:07:09.19 There are marine models that have been
00:07:12.01 very important to discovery about the brain,
00:07:14.19 and we take advantage of those marine models
00:07:17.17 and the scientists, here, that work on them.
00:07:19.10 And so, we offer scientific seminars and discussions
00:07:22.14 from the faculty of SPINES,
00:07:24.04 and we make sure that our students have the opportunity...
00:07:27.23 opportunity to attend Marine Biological Laboratory seminars and lectures.
00:07:32.12 Now, we also offer lab work to the students.
00:07:34.28 Our current laboratories are the ones that I'm gonna talk about here.
00:07:38.14 We have a laboratory using zebrafish for psychiatric discovery.
00:07:42.27 The zebrafish is an incredible model
00:07:46.10 and increasingly is being used to discover
00:07:49.04 very important information about the brain
00:07:51.02 and about psychiatric disorders.
00:07:52.28 We also have recently instituted
00:07:56.08 a laboratory around MatLab.
00:07:58.13 MatLab is a powerful computational tool
00:08:01.09 of significant benefit to neuroscience research.
00:08:03.20 We want to introduce the students to this tool
00:08:06.13 so they can get over the threshold of difficulty
00:08:08.27 and use the tool when they ret... return to their home institutions
00:08:14.25 and return to their research there.
00:08:17.08 And then, we offer a wonderful laboratory
00:08:19.10 in human neuroanatomy,
00:08:21.00 where students dissect human brains.
00:08:22.15 This has never occurred at the Marine Biological Laboratory,
00:08:24.21 and so it's a wonderful opportunity to the students,
00:08:26.29 many of whom will never have that opportunity elsewhere.
00:08:32.23 Now, we also offer some training and discussion
00:08:35.23 around responsible conduct of research and research ethics.
00:08:38.22 We don't do this because we anticipate problems,
00:08:41.05 but we do it to empower the students.
00:08:44.02 When you're working at the forefront of science,
00:08:45.25 the ethical issues have not all been resolved,
00:08:48.04 and so we want to empower the students
00:08:49.27 to be able to address these issues
00:08:51.25 as they go forward
00:08:53.17 and perhaps become leaders in those discussions.
00:08:55.10 And so, we discuss many ethical approaches in research,
00:08:59.04 including the social foundations of science,
00:09:00.22 data acquisition and interpretation,
00:09:03.16 authorship and how to navigate the difficulties
00:09:07.13 of deciding who becomes an author in a scientific paper.
00:09:11.00 We discuss conflict of interest,
00:09:13.07 and we have discussions around how to respond
00:09:16.09 to miscond... misconduct
00:09:18.24 if you ever come across it in your scientific career.
00:09:21.09 We offer discussions around neuroethics.
00:09:23.12 Now, neuroethics is a subdivision of bioethics,
00:09:25.28 but it's a very important subdivision of bioethics,
00:09:28.01 because the brain is a very special organ.
00:09:30.08 It's the organ of thought and identity,
00:09:33.00 and it really gives us our sense of self.
00:09:34.26 So, people get nervous when people start tinkering with it
00:09:38.01 or looking into it.
00:09:39.26 New techniques in brain imaging give people the impression
00:09:42.20 that people might be reading their minds,
00:09:44.14 that scientists might be reading their minds.
00:09:45.29 And we have to think about that
00:09:48.03 and think about the implications of that,
00:09:50.01 and how individuals might respond to that,
00:09:51.29 and how scientists can best deal with it.
00:09:53.28 In addition, there's a new area of cognitive enhancement.
00:09:57.04 We have the opportunity, through drugs and through other technologies,
00:10:00.17 to increase thinking,
00:10:03.01 to improve thinking in individuals.
00:10:04.17 And we have to think about how that's going to affect individuals
00:10:06.24 out into the future
00:10:08.22 and what sort of boundaries we want to apply to that.
00:10:12.05 And so, we want to emp...
00:10:14.19 we want to empower our students to deal
00:10:16.21 with these very important ethical issues.
00:10:18.15 Now, the final thing that we offer at SPINES
00:10:20.28 is the SPINES Symposium.
00:10:23.01 This is the students' opportunity to present their research to the marine biological community.
00:10:27.01 It's the last thing we offer in the course.
00:10:28.24 It's a full-day symposium.
00:10:30.15 And all of those prominent scientists that we talked about earlier
00:10:33.10 will attend this symposium and see the students' work
00:10:36.05 from their home institution.
00:10:37.28 Here's a nice picture of the 2013 course
00:10:40.01 at the end of the symposium,
00:10:41.22 in front of the Eel Pond on the Marine Biological Laboratory campus.
00:10:45.12 Okay.
00:10:47.05 Now, we do have fun in the midst of all of that work.
00:10:49.16 One thing I didn't say is that we...
00:10:51.29 we are a bootcamp sort of course
00:10:54.22 where we schedule students from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm
00:10:57.03 every day for 6 days a week.
00:10:58.25 So... they've gotta find time to do fun
00:11:01.11 around those particular hours.
00:11:03.11 But we're located at Cape Cod
00:11:05.12 and all the wonderful things that are offered there.
00:11:07.13 The students who come to the course design their own T-shirts,
00:11:10.27 and this occurs for all of the courses at the MBL.
00:11:13.08 This is the T-shirt from the 2015 SPINES cohort.
00:11:16.10 You can see a squid squirting ink in the shape of a brain.
00:11:20.05 And if you look carefully,
00:11:21.23 you can see SPINES spelled out in the tentacles of the squid.
00:11:23.25 And if we take a look at the back of the T-shirt,
00:11:26.02 you can see the names of the students
00:11:28.11 who attended the course this year,
00:11:29.26 and the course directors,
00:11:31.17 in the shape of a spinal cord.
00:11:36.01 And then, one of the very fun things that we do every year
00:11:39.06 is the 4th of July parade.
00:11:40.20 There's a lot of celebration around the 4th of July.
00:11:42.12 The whole community participates,
00:11:43.26 and the entire MBL gets involved.
00:11:45.20 It's a lot of fun.
00:11:48.25 So, as I mentioned,
00:11:51.00 we've served a lot of students over the past 25 years.
00:11:52.29 We've had over 300 graduate students, postdoctoral fellows,
00:11:55.14 and early career faculty supported through SPINES.
00:11:58.11 Many of these have become leaders in brain research,
00:12:01.02 and we look forward to many others
00:12:03.22 becoming leaders in the future,
00:12:05.14 as they attend SPINES and move on in their careers.
00:12:07.25 And here's just a sampling of individuals
00:12:09.15 who have come through SPINES.
00:12:11.12 There's Dr. Tirin Moore, a professor at Stanford University
00:12:14.07 and also an HHMI investigator.
00:12:16.26 There's Dr. Maria Carrillo,
00:12:19.01 who is a scientific director at the Alzheimer's Association.
00:12:22.29 Dr. Yakeel Quiroz from Massachu...
00:12:25.22 Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard,
00:12:28.15 who just recently received the National Institutes of Health
00:12:31.13 Early Independence Award from the Director.
00:12:34.14 Dr. Rhonda Dzakpasu,
00:12:36.21 who is a professor of physics at Georgetown University
00:12:38.27 and also a professor of pharmacology and physiology.
00:12:42.12 She's using physics to better understand the brain,
00:12:45.01 and all of the tools and techniques that go along with that.
00:12:48.18 And then there's Dr. Kevin Jones,
00:12:51.01 a professor at Howard University,
00:12:53.07 who's leading research on the neural circuitry
00:12:55.29 that's involved in psychiatric disorders.
00:12:58.15 So, we have an incredible group of individuals
00:13:00.27 who have gone on from SPINES to become leaders in the field.
00:13:05.18 And so, what I'm gonna end with, here,
00:13:08.12 is some testimonials from SPINES students
00:13:10.15 who have just completed the course,
00:13:12.16 and they're gonna offer their view about what...
00:13:15.07 what is special about SPINES
00:13:17.07 and what they've benefited from in attending SPINES.
00:13:19.11 Thank you very much.
00:13:21.05 When I first got here, I was really anxious.
00:13:22.21 I was gonna be coming to a new place
00:13:24.20 with people that I didn't know.
00:13:25.29 But by the end of the first week here,
00:13:27.12 I knew I made a family.
00:13:29.04 It's really refreshing to...
00:13:31.08 to be at breakfast with people who talk neuroscience with you
00:13:34.11 and who, like, have the same passions.
00:13:35.23 Not only does it provide a professional development
00:13:38.18 such as networking and grant writing,
00:13:40.10 but it also provides a sense of community.
00:13:43.15 I'm walking away with a strong sense of community
00:13:45.29 and knowing that there are other neuroscientists
00:13:48.21 that have had similar life experiences to mine.
00:13:51.15 It allows me to think about what I want to do for my career.
00:13:54.10 To not only think about it,
00:13:56.04 but to also realize, and be encouraged,
00:13:58.05 that I can achieve any goal that I set out to achieve.
00:14:01.03 These are gonna be people that are... you're gonna have, for the rest of your lives,
00:14:03.22 there to support you both emotionally and career-wise.
00:14:07.01 And the best part is it's not just with the students;
00:14:08.18 it's also with the mentors.
00:14:10.18 They want to see you succeed, and they're gonna be there for you every step of the way.
00:14:13.13 It's a very empowering opportunity.
00:14:15.17 It's an opportunity to set yourself up for success.
00:14:18.13 Yeah... hahaha...

This Talk
Speaker: Keith Trujillo
Audience:
  • Educators of H. School / Intro Undergrad
  • Educators of Adv. Undergrad / Grad
  • Researcher
  • Educators
Recorded: July 2015
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Talk Overview

The Summer Program in Neuroscience, Ethics and Survival (SPINES) is an intensive one-month experience, in which students are exposed to neuroscience laboratory techniques, contemporary neuroscience research, ethics and survival skills (including grant writing, teaching, public speaking, and others). For over 25 years, (SPINES) has supported the success of more than 300 minorities in neuroscience, making this program a model for the positive impact that mentoring and professional development opportunities can have in the success of scientists from underrepresented backgrounds.

This video was produced and brought to you by iBiology in partnership with the National Research and Mentoring Network (NRMN).

Speaker Bio

Keith Trujillo

Keith Trujillo

Keith Trujillo is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Office for Training, Research and Education in the Sciences (OTRES) at California State University San Marcos. He received an Associate of Arts degree in Biological Sciences from Shasta College, Bachelors degrees in Biological Sciences, Psychology and Chemistry from California State University, Chico, and a Ph.D…. Continue Reading

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