BMS 8971 Scientific Writing and Communications
The overarching objective of this course is to equip students with the skills to present their research to a varying degree of detail in oral and written formats. Central to the course is the expectation that students will become immersed in the research literature relevant to their project. In the first module, students will practice synthesizing a body of literature, extracting the key components, and using them to build strong rationales for aims. Incorporated into this learning experience will be instruction on and practice in scientific writing, and journal club and research presentations. In the second module of the course, students will learn how to write a Specific Aims page, develop a solid Experimental Approach, and describe the Significance to frame their research proposal. In the final module, students will build on this foundation by incorporating their own preliminary data and further developing hypotheses and research plans, which will be presented as a chalk talk and evaluated by the St. Jude faculty and course instructors.