Hampton University and the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute Partnership

The HU/UPCI partnership was established in 2002 between the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute and Hampton University, in Hampton, VA. The partnership created an undergraduate Cancer Biology Curriculum that involved the faculty and administration at both institutions and provides cancer training and an education program centered on undergraduates in the Biology and Chemistry Departments of the Hampton University School of Science. New courses were developed in Cancer Biology in the undergraduate curriculum, including a semester-long, hypothesis-driven laboratory course. Additionally, a new teaching laboratory was equipped for cell culture and molecular biology investigations at Hampton. This teaching laboratory challenges students to pursue a longitudinal experiment rather than simply completing limited laboratory exercises. The key to success of this partnership was innovation in teaching of undergraduate courses using a cooperative learning approach to learn cancer biology. The challenge of distance between the two campuses is overcome by the use of videoconference, Blackboard, and email for both the courses and the lab. The courses introduce students to primarily literature in the cancer field, requiring them to probe cancer topics in depth and present their findings to the class in a poster format. Poster presentations replace traditional methods of teaching evaluation.

Eighteen undergraduate Cancer Fellows have completed summer rotations at UPCI. These students spend 10-12 weeks at UPCI in the summer conducting research with cancer research scientists. They then present their research at national meetings. Many of the students have received awards for their presentations.

The partnership is lead by Richard Steinman, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, and Cecile Andraos-Selim, MBBS, PhD, Associate Professor Biology at Hampton University, and funded through the National Cancer Institute.

In the spring of 2005, the partnership was expanded to include a program in Environmental Oncology through an additional NCI grant with Emanuela Taioli, MD, PhD as primary investigator. The primary goal of this project is to initiate a new curriculum and to build the scientific skills of HU undergraduate students with a focus on environmental and epidemiologic factors in cancer incidence, progression, prevention, and treatment. A novel training curriculum in molecular epidemiology complements a workshop course and a didactic course. This initiative is based in The Center for Environmental Oncology at UPCI.

The new education program will develop a course and a workshop, both new multidisciplinary tools directed at students starting at the junior level, with the specific aim to teach how to translate basic science results into human studies, and how results from molecular epidemiologic studies can answer public health issues related to health disparities. The focus of the workshop, Skills for Investigative Science, will be on students’ development of scientific language skills, framing of hypotheses, critical reading of peer-reviewed journal articles, and communication skills through the public presentation of scientific information. The course, Curriculum for Translational Epidemiology in Cancer Research, will feature lectures by HU-UPCI collaborating faculty and critical review of cancer literature on environmental epidemiology and gene-environment interaction. These courses will be complementary with the established cancer courses. A summer research internship will be available for students who attended the courses to test specific hypotheses on existing databases containing both epidemiological and biological data from human studies. The program will also develop evaluative measures that will compare cancer knowledge and beliefs of students prior to and after taking the series of cancer classes and to compare career attitudes of students participating in the summer research internship.

Completion of these goals will lead us closer to developing a national model for growing the number of minority cancer researchers, which in turn will greatly contribute to reducing cancer health disparities in minorities in America.

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Transformations Newsletter, Volume 1, Issue 1
(temporarily offline)

Associated Links

Contact:

Richard A. Steinman, MD, PhD
Associate Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology
University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute
The Hillman Cancer Center
Research Pavilion, Suite 2.18
5117 Centre Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-1863
Office: 412-623-3237
Email: steinman@pitt.edu

Cecile Andraos-Selim, MBBS, PhD
Associate Professor of Biology
Hampton University
Hampton, VA
Office: 757-727-5015
Email: cecile.andraos-selim@hamptonu.edu