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The Transdisciplinary Prevention Research Center has been instrumental in spawning numerous innovative training programs for investigators at the postdoctoral, predoctoral, and undergraduate levels. We believe that training is a natural part of the TPRC not only because of the opportunities that it affords trainees, but also because of the enhanced intellectual stimulation and spirit of collegiality that training activities bring to the community.
The Center's novel model of transdisciplinary training is guided by four principles:
1. By participating in problem-focused multi-disciplinary working groups, a trainee learns the unique contribution that his or her discipline brings to the solution of a problem. The goal is to train individuals to become masters within their discipline while learning the value of collaboration with others and having exposure to the various unique theories, skills, and methods of other disciplines.
2. Hearing the perspectives of other disciplines. This is often done through fostering connections of trainees with faculty members outside of the student's discipline.
3. Learning to write for multiple audiences. Examples of efforts made to foster training in this skill include: a 16-hour writing workshop led by Professor George Gopen who is renowned for his skill in writing; employing a professional science writer to tutor in writing policy briefs and applying academic work for lay audiences.
4. Interpersonal competence and respect across disciplines. Working groups are successful when each member is valued and respected.
Postdoctoral level training:
- The Center currently holds five members with externally funded awards to enhance their training in career development in translational prevention science.
- Training of Fellows associated with the Center for Child and Family Policy in advanced areas including data analytic training, exposure to models of dissemination-efficacy research, and participation in the Faculty Fellows program.
Predoctoral level training:
- Participating in externally-funded training programs seeking to train:
- clinically trained researchers specializing in the development, validation, and application of psychological interventions for mental and medical disorders
- building the capacity of classically trained social psychologists to translate their theory and research into models pertinent to the study and prevention of substance abuse
- researchers in developmental psychopathology with an emphasis in gene- environment interaction
- Allowing predoctoral students within and across university-based programs to access resources of the TPRC including research experiences with a wide-variety of highly trained researchers.
- Postdoctoral and predoctoral students are part of a vertical research team in which they are mentored by a leading scholar in the field of prevention science. As part of this team, they are given the opportunity to serve as a mentor for an undergraduate student pursuing interests in prevention science.
Undergraduate level training:
- Participation in the University-wide “Vertical Integration” Program that pairs undergraduate, graduate and faculty mentors together both to fashion shared research projects and to train undergraduates and graduate students in research through apprenticeships and didactic instruction
- Creating innovative courses on prevention and intervention science to be taught yearly to undergraduate students. For example, TPRC created and implemented a special topics course, PSY 170OS Prevention and Intervention , an overview of the issues of substance use, abuse and addiction as well as other addictions and disorders .
- In partnership with the Duke Endowment, the Center offers a ten week Summer Research Internship Program intended for ethnic minority undergraduate students.
Interns are matched with a mentor as part of a vertical research team on a project related to their interests. In collaboration with their mentor, each intern will write a research paper and make a presentation of their research at the conclusion of the summer.
The work of the 2007 interns was accepted at the Student Poster Symposium of the Society for Research on Adolescents Biennial Meeting, March 6-9, 2008, in Chicago, IL . Risk and Protective Factors in Adolescent Substance Use Behaviors: A Multi-Faceted, Biopsychosocial Approach. Chair: Philip R. Costanzo; Discussant: Wilkie Wilson.
- Indicators of Adolescent Smoking Onset and Cigarette Use, Summer Robins, Dorene Mackinnon
- Buffering Effects of Parenting and Ethnic Identity on Relations Among Academics and Substance Use in African American Adolescents, Shawn C.T. Jones, Karen Appleyard, Philip R. Costanzo
- Effects of the High School Transition on Alcohol Use, Courtnye Rawls Lloyd, Clara G. Muschkin
- Race-Related Risk and Protection in the Initiation of Drug Use by Black Youths, Valencia Audel Harriott, Mary A. Terzian
- In addition, the Center participates in the North Carolina Health Careers Access Program and provides internship opportunities to those students as well.
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