Archived Syllabi of the Topics in Professional Development Course

Details: Last Updated: December 4th, 2022

The Fall semester of the Academic Year 2015-2016:

The course focused on 'Omics. ‘OMICS are emerging technologies for understanding the behavior of cells, tissues, organs, and the whole organism at the molecular level using methods such as genomics, proteomics, systems biology, bioinformatics, as well as the computational tools needed to analyze and make sense of the data. These technologies have the potential to facilitate prediction based on models built with existing in vivo data (animal and human), as well as new and existing in vitro and in silico data.

The objective of this course was to provide graduate and postdoctoral immunology trainees with an introduction to the topics associated with ‘omics. Each of these topics will be covered by 1-3 lectures. The first will provide a general overview, and the rest will focus on applications.

Click here for the syllabus for the 'Omics course

The syllabus of past classes taught in the MIC741: Topics in Professional Development course, as well as links to the slides presented in some of the classes can be found here. Click on the title to access the slide presentation

The Spring semester of the Academic Year 2015-2016:

This course focused on oral and poster scientific presentations. Each trainee prepares a 15 minutes oral presentation followed by a session of questions from all trainees and answers by the presenter. Led by instructors and using an "NIH study section format", each trainee then provides a detailed critique of the presentation, with the speaker benefiting from the discussion by listening only.

Each participant in the class will also prepare a poster, to be discussed in a similar fashion. A poster session, open to all immunology trainees, will be available at the end of the course.

The Fall semester of the Academic Year 2016-2017:

Part of the course focused on grant writing. The goal is to provide graduate students and post-doctoral fellows with the opportunity to write a grant application in their area of research and to expose them to the grant review process. The trainee will prepare a grant application in a step-wise manner. They will prepare a 15 minutes oral presentation of their proposals that will be discussed with the class as a whole. Led by the course masters and using an "NIH study section format", colleague trainees participating in the class will provide a detailed critique of the grant, with the speaker benefiting from the discussion without actively participating in it.

Moreover, eminent UAB Faculty members are invited to discuss their own path to success and answer trainee questions. For a detailed syllabus, click here.

The Spring semester of the Academic Year 2016-2017:

The first part of the course will continue focusing on grant writing. The goal is to provide graduate students and post-doctoral fellows with the opportunity to write a grant application in their area of research and to expose them to the grant review process. The trainee will prepare a grant application in a step-wise manner. They will prepare a 15 minutes oral presentation of their proposals that will be discussed with the class as a whole. Led by the course masters and using an "NIH study section format", colleague trainees participating in the class will provide a detailed critique of the grant, with the speaker benefiting from the discussion without actively participating in it.

The second part of the course will focus on poster scientific presentations. Each trainee will prepare a poster presentation followed by a session of questions from all trainees and answers by the presenter. Click here for a syllabus.

The Fall Semester of the Academic Year 2017-2018

The main objective of this course was to explore the history of immunology. The textbook used will be "A history of Immunology", 2nd edition, by Arthur M. Silverstein. Each trainee will be assigned a chapter and will have to search a scientific article relevant to the same period.. Using these sources, the trainee will prepare a short presentation, followed by a discussion by the entire class of the issues presented. Click here for a complete syllabus.

The Spring Semester of the Academic Year 2017-2018

This semester, the course will include trainee presentations and meetings with leaders in science. The objective of the trainee presentations will be to learn how to present one’s data emphasizing: (a) What is already known in the field (10 minutes background introduction); (b) Data obtained (10 minutes); (c) The significance of the results within the context of what is known, i.e., how will the study advance knowledge and open new avenues for research (10 minutes). The objective of the leader lectures will be to gain insight into actual pathways to a successful career. Click here for a complete syllabus.

The Fall semester of the Academic Year 2018-2019:

The topic that will be discussed is Immune-Mediated Diseases. The objectives of this course are: (1) To provide graduate and postdoctoral immunology trainees with an opportunity to learn medical aspects of immunological diseases and discuss these with UAB experts in the respective medical area; (2) To train the students in searching the literature for medical aspects of immunological diseases; and (3) To encourage discussion and help the students discern differences between information obtained in polished articles in the literature and the medical picture emerging at the patient’s bedside.

Each meeting will consist of a trainee presentation about an immune-mediated disease, based on the respective chapter in the book Clinical Immunology: Principles and Practice (Rich, Ed.) and two articles selected by the trainee on the topic. Thd ensuing discussion will be moderated by a medical expert in the respective medical area.

Click here for a detailed syllabus for this course

The Winter/Spring semester of the Academic Year 2018-2019:

The goal is to provide immunology graduate students and post-doctoral fellows with the opportunity to write a grant application in their area of research, appropriate to the stage in their career. Led by the class moderators and using an "NIH study section format", colleague trainees participating in the class will provide a detailed critique of the grant, with the speaker benefiting from the discussion without actively participating in it. Assigned reviewers will prepare an NIH-style, written review of the application assigned to them

Click here for a detailed syllabus for this course

The Fall semester of the Academic Year 2019-2020:

The objective was to learn how to present one’s data emphasizing: (1) What is already known in the field (10 minutes background introduction); (2) Data obtained (10 minutes); (3) The significance of the results within the context of what is known, i.e., how will the study advance knowledge and open new avenues for research (10 minutes). Led by instructors and using an "NIH study section format", each trainee then provides a detailed critique of the presentation, with the speaker benefiting from the discussion by listening only. All trainees will submit an abstract to present at CAMBAC Research Day, December 5, 2019.

Click here for a detailed syllabus for this course

The Winter-Spring semester of the Academic Year 2019-2020:

To allow all trainees to present, in the first part of this semester, trainees who had not presented in the previous semester were given the opportunity to do so in this semester, with the goals listed above.

Objective of Leader Lectures in the second part of the course: There is no better way to learn about what it takes to succeed in academia than to learn from those that have succeeded. As part of a course entitled Topics in Professional Development, we invite leaders on campus to meet the trainees and share their experiences with them. Campus leaders spend approximately 20-30 minutes reviewing their career, 20-30 minutes on a topic – research, clinical or otherwise – of interest to the leader, and 20-30 minutes for questions. This offers the students an opportunity to broaden their horizons, and also offers leaders on campus the opportunity to meet with students selected for T32 support that are most likely to pursue an academic career.

This course was interrupted in March 2020 because of the COVID epidemic