When Alicia Schiller, Ph.D., was a graduate student, she found herself getting outcompeted for fellowships by candidates from other academic medical centers — candidates who were better able to articulate their full range of experiences and activities.
 |
So she sat down with Dele Davies, M.D., senior vice chancellor for academic affairs and dean of graduate studies.
“I came to Dr. Davies when he was still very new, and already incredibly busy,” Dr. Schiller said. “He took the time to meet with a couple of students with a crazy, unformed idea. And he listened.”
Now, Dr. Schiller is back at UNMC as faculty member, assistant professor and research scientist, in anesthesiology. And she oversees a program that is the end result of that meeting with Dr. Davies. A program that will help UNMC grad students compete with their national peers.
The Service-Learning/Interprofessional Education Badge Program empowers graduate students to document time spent outside of the laboratory or classroom participating in important activities that advance their careers. The program offers four levels of recognition (bronze through platinum), with each increasing level requiring more service learning or interprofessional education activities.
UNMC’s clinical students have long had the opportunity to be recognized for their extracurricular work. The badging program merely rewards graduate students for the basic-science equivalent of working at the SHARING Clinic, for example.
To get badge credit, students’ extracurricular activities must be approved or overseen by a faculty member, Dr. Schiller said.
But the badges are a quick and easy-to-grasp way — in an NIH-style biosketch, for example — for an outside audience to see a graduate student’s commitment to service learning and professional development.
Badges also will be acknowledged at graduation.
Levels of achievement are based on hours of service.
Bronze: 80 hours
Silver: 100 hours
Gold: 120 hours
Platinum: 120 hours plus one of the following:
- Service for at least one year as a president or vice president of a recognized student organization at UNMC.
- Exceptional contribution to the student community such as development of a new program or starting a new club or organization at UNMC.
Platinum badges require review and are awarded on a case-by-case basis.
The badges are a recognition program but carry no academic accreditation.
For more information, contact Dr. Schiller or go to the Badge Program website.