Training Plan
The worksheet to prepare to write your training plan is here. The slides for this session can be found here.
Training Activities
There should be specific activities you can articulate to achieve each goal. Some examples:
- Mentor-based training, for example for laboratory skills or concepts that can only be learned from an expert.
- Coursework. Limit this to no more than one course per year, unless this is the only way to learn this. Should be upper level courses not general concepts unless you are changing fields.
- Workshops. Particularly hands-on workshops, some good example are Glucose Clamping the Conscious Mouse: A Laboratory Course,
Isotope Tracers in Metabolic Research: Principles and Practice of Kinetic Analysis, Summer Session In Epidemiology, or the NIDDK Central Repository Workshops.
- Professional Development Classes, such as the CDI Career Development Series, the MICHR K-Writing Workshops, Rackham Professional Development Workshops , and OGPS Professional Development Events.
- Relevant Conferences and Meetings, to present your research and build your professional network.
Think about how these activities are integrated in your research project, for example if you require certain knowledge or skills to complete an aim, that should occur earlier in your fellowship. Make sure to mention how it relates to your research, so that the research and training plans are well integrated. These should not be driven by “usual activities”. You can include things like lab meetings, or journal clubs, or presenting at CDI-MOD, but those would probably happen independnt of the support. Think about what this fellowship will enable.
Your Team
For each goal make sure one or two people are responsible for supervising and assessing your progress. THis can be your sponsor, but try to include other people as well. They should be invovled in your research as well, but you can also pick collaborators, co-sponsors and co-investigators specific to training goals if that is best. Make sure to clearly articulate to them their roles and responsibilities so that their letters of support are consistent with what you write. Think (or ask them) what the best evidence is that they can effectivly perform this role. Could include publications, or perhaps prior trainee success.
Meetings
Describe for each goal/person how often you will meet and in what format. You should also meet approximately twice a year with the entire team to discuss training and research progress.
Review Criteria (NRSA)
See the full NRSA Review Criteria for context. The criteria most relevant to this section are:
Criterion 1: Candidate’s Goals, Preparedness and Potential
- Consider the candidate’s potential to benefit from the fellowship research training plan and to transition to the next career stage in the biomedical research workforce.
Criterion 2: Research Training Plan
- Evaluate the goals of the overall research training plan and the extent to which the plan will facilitate the attainment of the goals.
- Discuss whether the research training plan identifies areas of needed development and contains appropriate, realistic activities and milestones to address those needs.
- (Clinical trials only) If the candidate is proposing to gain experience in a clinical trial as part of his or her research training, is there evidence of the appropriate expertise, experience, resources, and ability on the part of the sponsor(s) to guide the applicant during the clinical trial research experience?
Suggestions and Ideas
- Make sure to crossreference training plan and research plan.
- Add a timeline of activities, integrating research milestones.
Resources