When the COVID-19 pandemic forced education to be virtual, Brett Spear, PhD, (left) and Timothy McClintock, PhD, (right) collaborated to create an online workshop for rising second-year graduate students.
RESEARCH FACULTY CREATE VIRTUAL WORKSHOP TO ADAPT TO PANDEMIC “If there is one good thing that came from this COVID-19 experience, it forced us to act. We had to act, and we had to act fast. This is not only true about courses, but also about other opportunities to train our students. I would say this experience really changed my attitude about how to get things accomplished.” —Dr. Spear
16 | UKMedicine
The COVID-19 pandemic has created an ever-changing environment requiring quick adjustment, especially in the field of research. In response to the pandemic, scientists at UK ceased non-essential research activity in the spring of 2020, and education was moved to online platforms. While these measures were necessary to ensure safety for faculty and learners, graduate students in the College of Medicine Integrated Biomedical Sciences (IBS) PhD program saw their progress interrupted. Brett Spear, PhD, professor in the department of microbiology, immunology, and molecular genetics, and former director of graduate studies for the IBS program, was concerned these students would not have a way to stay occupied and engaged through the pandemic restrictions, as IBS students normally do full-time research in the summer. “After spring break, students were no longer able to come to the lab to do research, and all their coursework moved online,” Dr. Spear said. “During the final half of the spring semester, the students could keep busy with their coursework even if they couldn’t come to lab; however, once the semester ended, there were no more courses, and they still could not do research.” Dr. Spear collaborated with Timothy McClintock, PhD, Louis Boyarsky Professor of Physiology, along with faculty in several College of Medicine departments including physiology and pharmacology and nutritional sciences. Together, they established the Bioinformatics, Excel, and R-programming Tools (BERT) workshop, a four-week course held entirely online through Zoom that taught rising second-year graduate students about useful technologies for analyzing large data sets. The workshop was geared toward the 21 students in the IBS program; however, 80 people signed up including College of Medicine faculty, post docs, staff, and students, as well as students from the College of Pharmacy.
