CCTS Executive Committee notes

Dear CCTS Education and Career Development Faculty and Friends,

The CCTS Executive Committee met yesterday. They are the leads of the 10 or so units, chaired by Richard Galbraith. I represented our group. There was a lot of discussion about who ought to be official Center faculty and how to appoint them. The overarching issue is that there is no precedent for matrix centers that don't live in a college, so we need to be clear about it for future generations. Right now we are tending towards 2 levels of faculty. Full faculty will be those with major commitments to and possibly funding through CCTS. They will vote on policies, curriculum, etc. Associate faculty may have access to CCTS resources, but not be funded or vote. This issue probably has more theoretical than practical importance for day-to-day operations, but we're trying to get it right.

We discussed changing the name of the center. Most of us don't really like "The Center for Clinical and Translational Science" as too long and klutzy. The leading candidate is VECTOR which is an acronym for something I can't recall right now. If you have an idea, please do toss it in.

Similarly, we can rename our little unit which is currently "Education and Career Development." This also seems a bit long to me. I guess we could go for just "Education" or just "Career Development" or something else. Do we care? Suggestions?

Russ Tracy and Richard Galbraith have drafted a brochure format that they hope each unit will use to describe itself. We would use the same text and graphics on the web site. It calls for a brief description of our unit, the services offered, perhaps a mission statement, etc. I will distribute the sample when I get it.

There is an opening for a "CCTS Safety Officer" to be the on-site expert on human subjects protection with duties to assist faculty and staff in designing and submitting protocols, but also in policing ongoing protocols. This person would review complaints or concerns about patient safety and have the authority to stop a trial that was unsafe. It is related to IRB issues, but an independent task. It is a funded position (part-time) for a faculty member and could be pretty interesting. Nominations?

The CTSA application was reviewed this week. No details are available. We should hear something in the next few months.

That's the news for now. I continue to post notes and news to our shared blog at http://uvmcts.blogspot.com/ You can subscribe to it as an e-mail digest feed. And, you can post to it yourself. It is a good way for us to keep in touch, share ideas, have discussions and generally work together. Our fellows and students also participate. You will find a calendar of coming events on the right hand side along with some valuable web links. Let me know how to improve it, please.

Thanks

Ben

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Benjamin Littenberg, MD
Henry and Carleen Tufo Professor of Medicine & Professor of Nursing
University of Vermont
89 Beaumont Avenue, Room S459, Burlington, Vermont 05405
802-656-4560 fax 802-656-4576