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The program
at Columbia is the newest summer program entering its sixth year
in 2015. Growth has been rapid as the program now offers a total
of 38 learning opportunities, a number larger than those at the
more established programs. Also, the 500-600 participants make
this the largest attended program. The majority of the faculty
are affiliated with Columbia.
Organizers
have sought not to allow the quick growth to undermine the quality
of the program, according to Gina Schellenbaum Lovasi, a
co-director of the program. The program is among the earliest
starting with the first course kicking off on June 1. Courses
usually enroll 10-30 persons each.
Asked about
new courses and hot topics, co-director Ryan Demmer pointed
to courses being offered in the realm of urban health (including
Assessing Neighborhoods, Designing Healthy Cities and GIS) and
microbiome research (including a course on analysis of metagenomic
data as well as an applied course on QIIME and Qiita, two widely
used platforms for analysis of microbiome data). Other popular
courses not often included in traditional degree granting programs
include Agent-Based Models of Population Health, Natural Language
Processing: Applications in Epidemiology, and Social Network
Analysis, Principles of Effective Data Visualization, Network
Meta-Analysis, Digital Access of Big Data. And we still have a
wide range of substantive and applied methods courses for those
wanting to gain a new advanced skill or get introductory training
in population health and epidemiology. In early April, ~15% of
courses have filled to capacity which is a first and we anticipate
a several more to fill to capacity prior to the registration
deadline.
The Columbia
program received an R-25 grant (PI, Lisa Bates) from the National
Institutes of Health which allows it to give scholarships to
students interested in different areas highlighted by the program.
The deadline has passed for applicants for 2016, however, the
grant is for a 5-year period and will be available next year.
Applicants are judged on how the requested training would fill a
need they have and how “geared-up” or well-prepared the applicants
are “to move forward” with the specified training, according to
Lovasi.
The Columbia
program has sought to be responsive to the needs of its
participants. Some topics were recognized as not truly requiring a
week-long course and a mixture of 1 & 2-day workshops have been
created in addition to growing suite of on-line distance learning
courses. |