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Chapkin Mentoring Philosophy
The determination of excellence for teaching and research faculty can be made utilizing a variety of metrics, including research grant dollars, peer-reviewed publications, invited presentations and other important scholarly contributions. Dr. Chapkin’s excellence in teaching and research extends beyond those standard metrics and includes the large number of students he has trained, the extensive number of times he has served on review panels for granting agencies, the number of journals for which he has served as a reviewer and as a member of their editorial boards. In all of these categories he has excelled as evidenced by his 2014 promotion to University Distinguished Professor. Dr. Chapkin has been recognized many times for his research contributions, including the Vice Chancellor’s Award in Excellence in 2016 and most recently by receiving the National Cancer Institute’s (NIH) R35 Outstanding Investigator Award. Woven into his success are the many achievements of his students, post-docs and young faculty protégés. It would not be possible to attain his level of productivity without the dedication and meritorious effort of his young colleagues.
Three of Dr. Chapkin’s graduate students have received TAMU LSAMP “Bridge to the Doctorate” scholarships (Fuentes, Hernandez, Salinas) and one received an NIH predoctoral scholarship to “Promote Diversity in Health-Related Research” (Triff). In addition, Dr. Alfredo Erazo-Oliveras, a new post doc in the lab (a native of Puerto Rico), has also recently been awarded a prestigious National Academies of Sciences, Engineering & Medicine Ford Foundation Fellowship (post-doctoral) Diversity Award.
Transparency, honesty and fairness are central tenets of his training and mentoring philosophy. Dr. Chapkin embraces both scientific rigor and transparency in accordance with NIH ethics guidelines. For example, all his trainees are counseled in the four areas deemed important for enhancing rigor and transparency that applies to the full spectrum of research, basic to clinical. Specifically:
- The scientific premise forming the basis of the proposed research.
- Rigorous experimental design and reporting of unbiased scientific results.
- Consideration of relevant biological variables.
- Authentication of key biological and chemical resources.
It is emphasized repeatedly that Dr. Chapkin expects all trainees will achieve robust and unbiased results. All his trainees participate in program-sponsored seminars and an ethics class offered by several of the Departments with interest in Cancer Prevention. In addition, since he is a member of an NCI-funded T32 post-doctoral training program (T32-CA090301, formerly R25-CA090301) in Nutrition, Biostatistics & Bioinformatics (http://www.stat.tamu.edu/train/), his lab members have the opportunity to interact with statistically oriented trainees (Biostatisticians, Statisticians, Engineers, Mathematicians, Computer Scientists, etc.) who are developing new statistical and computational methods that are tailored to the biology of Nutrition and Cancer.
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