STEM education
NIH: Research Education Program Funding Opportunities
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Research Education Program (R25) supports research educational activities that complement other formal training programs in the mission areas of the NIH institutes and centers. Additionally, the program goals include an effort to enhance the biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research workforce; recruit individuals with specific specialty or disciplinary backgrounds to research careers in biomedical, behavioral, and clinical sciences; and foster a better understanding of this research and its implications. Several of the institutes recently released funding opportunity announcement seeking applications for activities related to their research domains. NIMH Research Education Mentoring Program for HIV/AIDS Researchers…
National Science Board Launches New STEM Education Resource
On October 28, the National Science Board released a new online resource, STEM Education Resource, where the public can access data on the STEM workforce, including college degrees in STEM fields and jobs in science-related occupations. The interactive tool provides data points, graphics, maps, and other resources to allow users to learn about national trends in STEM, connecting them to the data in the 2014 Science and Engineering Indicators produced by the National Science Board. Check out the tool here. Back to this issue’s table of contents.
2015 MCAT Includes New Social and Behavioral Sciences Section
Starting in spring 2015, the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) will test prospective medical students’ knowledge of the social and behavioral sciences. The MCAT2015, the first update to the MCAT since 1992, includes a new section on “Psychological, Social, and Biological Foundations of Behavior.” The section is weighted equally to the two other subject-knowledge sections, “Biological and Biochemical Foundations of Living Systems” and “Chemical and Physical Foundations of Biological Systems,” in terms of length and number of questions (a fourth section on critical analysis is shorter).