Mental Health Research Gateway Program
Program Overview
The NIMH-funded Mental Health Research Gateway Program is a collaboration between the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio’s (UTHSCSA) Center for Biomedical Neuroscience (CBN), the Department of Pharmacology at UTHSCSA and the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). The overall goal of the program is to encourage undergraduate students to enter and complete doctoral programs relevant to mental health research. The program offers participants a variety of experiences that will help prepare students for success in a research-intensive doctoral program. Participants will have research responsibilities, attend seminars, actively participate in a student journal club and take part in formal course work. In order to gain as much as possible from the program, participants will be encouraged to spend either consecutive summers in the program or spend a summer and a fall or a spring semester in the program. Undergraduate students who choose to participate in the program during the fall or spring semester will conduct research in the lab of their faculty mentor while attending classes at their home institutions or at UTSA if the student’s home institution is outside of San Antonio. Students will receive credit from their home institutions for the research they conduct as part of the program. This way, students will be able to stay on track in their degree program.
Research
Once a participant is accepted into the program s/he will be matched with a faculty mentor in whose lab s/he will learn the basics of biomedical research. Each participant will also have a second mentor chosen from the graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in the lab where s/he will be working. The faculty mentor will work with the undergraduate student to establish a research project and will be the student’s primary mentor. The graduate student or postdoctoral fellow mentor will guide the undergraduate student in the everyday workings of the lab, assist the student in learning necessary techniques and help the student ‘trouble shoot’ problems where necessary.
Each participant will be given the contact information for her/his mentors and will be sent journal articles the faculty mentor considers relevant to the research being conducted in her/his lab. The undergraduate student will be required to read these articles before beginning the program and will be encouraged to contact her/his mentors with any questions s/he may have regarding the articles. Participants may also be asked questions by their mentors to make certain they have an understanding of specific aspects of the basic science underlying the work being conducted in the lab. The faculty mentor may suggest additional background reading if s/he feels the student needs a more solid understanding of the science.
At the end of the second week of the program, undergraduate students will be expected to produce, with the aid of their mentors, a one to two page prospectus of the research they will carry out during the summer. At the end of the summer session, undergraduate students (again, with the aid of the students’ mentors) will be required to write a four to six page final paper, in the style of a scientific manuscript. Participants will also give an oral presentation (15 minutes) describing their research. Writing the research prospectus and the final paper will serve to assist participants in developing their scientific writing skills and aid them in developing their scientific thought process. These papers will also serve to show the undergraduate students what a graduate student experiences while developing her/his research proposal and dissertation. The oral presentation will not only assist the undergraduate student to develop speaking skills, but will also allow the student to experience what a graduate student may experience during the public defense of her/his dissertation.
Course Work
The course work for this program is meant to serve two purposes. The first is to give participants a foundation of the science behind mental health research and an overview of the scope of mental health research. The second purpose is to allow participants to experience the ‘juggling act’ that graduate students perform balancing research responsibilities, course work, professional development activities and social life. Due to the brevity of the summer session, each of the two didactic courses, Biological Bases of Brain Function and Neuropsychopharmacology, are the equivalent of a one-credit course. The courses will be taught in the manner of a graduate lecture course with an overall course director and several lecturers who are experts in the material being presented. There will be exams in each course, but the main purpose of the exams will be to help the undergraduate students gauge their success in comprehending the material that was presented during lectures.
The first summer session will include an introductory course titled, ‘Biological Bases of Brain Function’ and a techniques course. The techniques course will introduce participants to a variety of the techniques commonly used in research. The Biological Bases of Brain Function course will offer students an overview of the science underlying mental health research. This course will begin during the second week of the summer session and there will be two lectures each week. It will consist of 16 one-hour lectures. There will be two lectures apiece on the following topics:
- Neuroanatomy
- Excitability and Conduction
- Synaptic Transmission
- Receptors and Effector Mechanisms
- Molecular Biology and the Central Nervous System
- Biogenic Amine Transmitters
- Amino Acid Transmitters
- Peptide Transmitters
Neuropsychopharmacology is a follow up to Biological Bases of Brain Function and will be offered to students returning for the second summer session. The emphasis of this course is on brain diseases, the approaches used to study them and the drugs used to treat them. The course will be set up the same as the Biological Bases of Brain Function course is with 16 one-hour lectures. There will be two lectures on each of the following topics:
- Genetic Approaches to Mental Diseases
- Animal Behavioral Approaches to Brain Diseases
- Computational Neurobiology and Brain Disease
- Mood Disorders
- Schizophrenia
- Anxiety Disorders
- Substance Abuse
- Neurodegenerative Disorders
Seminars
Participants will be expected to attend scheduled departmental seminars, the bi-monthly graduate student journal club and a four part seminar series. The purpose of the summer seminar series is to introduce participants to issues relevant to biomedical research and what it takes to enter this field and succeed as a scientist. The four one-hour-long seminars will cover the following topics: Ethical Issues in Biomedical Research; Career Options within the Field of Biomedical Research; The Role of Biomedical Research in Society; and Perspectives from Postdoctoral Fellows and Graduate Students. Speakers for the seminar series will include graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and faculty as well as invited speakers.
Application Information
The program will accept eighteen students each summer and two students for participation during the academic year. Applicants to the program must have a minimum of a 3.0 overall GPA and must have completed a college level biology or chemistry course and received a ‘B’ or better in the course. Due to the length of the program, students in their first or second year of college are especially encouraged to apply to the program.
To apply to the program, students should submit an application, an unofficial transcript, a personal statement, a security background check, and a letter of recommendation from a professor. The personal statement should include what the student thinks it means to be a research scientist and why s/he is interested in becoming one.
Financial Support
Program participants will be given $3,500 to help defray the cost of participation in the program. Participants from outside San Antonio who will be enrolled in classes at UTSA during a fall or spring semester will also receive tuition reimbursement for that semester.
Additional Information
For additional information regarding this program or for application materials, please contact the Program Coordinator, Veronica Sprayberry at 210.567.4220.
University Contacts
Alan Frazer, PhD, Program Director, UTHSCSA
James Hall, PhD, Our Lady of the Lake University
Jose Cimadevilla, PhD, St. Mary’s University
Suzette Chopin, PhD, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi
Luis Colom, PhD, UT-Brownsville
Hassan Ahmad, PhD, UT-Pan American
Joe Martinez, PhD, UTSA
Faculty Mentors
Dr. Jose Cavazos, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology, UTHSCSA
Dr. William Clarke, Associate Professor of Pharmacology, UTHSCSA
Dr. Tom Cunningham, Associate Professor of Pharmacology, UTHSCSA
Dr. Brian E. Derrick, Associate Professor, Division of Life Sciences, UTSA
Dr. Lily Dong, Assistant Professor of Cellular & Structural Biology, UTHSCSA
Dr. Michael Escamilla, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, UTHSCSA
Dr. Charles France, Professor of Pharmacology and Psychiatry, UTHSCSA
Dr. Alan Frazer, Professor of Pharmacology and Psychiatry, Chair of Pharmacology
Dr. Andrea Giuffrida, Assistant Professor of Pharmacology, UTHSCSA
Dr. Kenneth Hargreaves, Professor of Endodontics and Pharmacology, Chair of Endodontics, UTHSCSA
Dr. Julie Hensler, Assistant Professor of Pharmacology, UTHSCSA
Dr. Carmen Hinojosa-Laborde, Associate Professor of Anesthesiology, UTHSCSA
Dr. David B. Jaffe, Associate Professor, Division of Life Sciences, UTSA
Dr. Wouter Koek, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, UTHSCSA
Dr. Richard Lamb, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Pharmacology UTHSCSA
Dr. Xin-Yun Lu, Assistant Professor of Pharmacology, UTHSCSA
Dr. Joe Martinez, Ewing Halsell Professor of Biology and Director, Division of Life Sciences, UTSA
Dr. Lance McMahon, Assistant Research Professor of Pharmacology, UTHSCSA
Dr. David Morilak, Associate Professor of Pharmacology, UTHSCSA
Dr. John Roache, Professor of Psychiatry and Pharmacology, UTHSCSA
Dr. James Roberts, Professor of Pharmacology, UTHSCSA
Dr. Russell Sanchez, Assistant Professor of Pharmacology, UTHSCSA
Dr. Randy Strong, Associate Professor of Pharmacology, UTHSCSA
Dr. Maharaj Ticku, Professor of Pharmacology, UTHSCSA
Dr. Charles Wilson, Roland K. and Jane W. Blumberg Professor of Bioscience, UTSA