EHS-TRUE Student Selected for Toxicology Mentoring and Skills Development Training Program
Siennah Miller
Cassandra Myers, a rising junior at the University of Arizona, working in the Cherrington lab. Cassandra helps quantify the amount of transporters in human samples.
Cassandra Myers from the University of Arizona was one of 25 undergraduate students competitively selected from across the country to the Toxicology Mentoring and Skills Development Training Program (ToxMSDT). Cassandra is one of two students from the University of Arizona. She is being mentored by Dr. Linval DePass.
ToxMSDT is a 5-year program funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH) providing career development opportunities for STEM undergraduate students from diverse underrepresented backgrounds. The goal of the program is to build a pathway for students from underserved communities to enter graduate toxicology programs and eventually choose toxicology as a career.
This unique 1-year long mentoring and skills development training program is hosted by the University of California, Davis housed in the Department of Molecular Biosciences. Other members of the consortium are the Society of Toxicology, Iowa State University, Tuskegee University, The Ohio State University, and Michigan State University. The program is mostly virtual. Each student mentee has been matched 1:1 with volunteer mentors from industry, academia, government, or nonprofit entities from across the country. The program will hold a virtual inaugural mentee/mentor training workshop at the University of California Davis. Future in-person events include mentees shadowing their respective mentors at their places of work, the attendance of the Society of Toxicology Annual Meeting in San Diego, California from March 26-29, 2022, and participation in capstone activities at Tuskegee University, Tuskegee, Alabama where successful candidates will receive a Certificate of Completion at the culmination of the program.
Program components include the self-directed completion of six learning-modules providing foundational knowledge in toxicology ranging from ‘Principles of Toxicology’ to ‘Applied Systems Toxicology’. The expected outcome of this training and mentoring program is that graduating students will be trained in toxicology by professionals to competitively join graduate training programs in toxicology.
Pia van Benthem, University of California Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine, Department of Molecular Biosciences