It is with anticipation that I write to you in 2021. We start this new year with the anticipation that this year will improve. Despite the challenges of 2020 we all experienced, FAES Academic Programs have continued to thrive and grow. We continue to offer new and high-quality educational programming. Fortunately, we were well-positioned to transition to fully online course offerings last March and have been able to develop even more high-quality courses and workshops. In addition to advanced biomedical classes, we are also adding some more basic foundational courses such as our new three-week January intersession course, Introductory Coding Skills (BIOF 101). For those of you like myself, who managed to miss the opportunity to learn coding earlier in our education, FAES can now fix that. (I’m excited to start this class that begins on January 11.)
Other New Opportunities for the New Year:
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You have asked for more credit transfer opportunities, so we are developing new partnerships with local universities. A great example builds on our partnership with the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). Students can take up to half their courses for the master’s in data science from FAES.
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We launched a new program, Prevailing Science that awards an interdisciplinary badge upon completion. This year's topic is "A Pandemic World".
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We have a new fellowship with the National Institute of Aging, where the awardees have one hundred percent of the cost of their Master’s of Professional Studies: Data Science at UMBC fully paid for. We are working with other institutes and universities to develop similar programs. Contact us if you would like to learn more.
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Last year, we learned that our online students want shorter formats – So we are delivering. We are offering credit-bearing courses in short 3 and 7-week formats in fall, spring and summer sessions.
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Our workshops can also now be done fully online.
- We have expanded our faculty and course development opportunities to provide all our faculty with the support to develop their courses according to the latest research in adult learning pedagogy.
Life is changing in ways we never would have imagined. Yet, the resiliency, creativity, and sense of community we share with our students, faculty, and staff have uniquely combined for us all to continue to grow and thrive. For example, hearty congratulations to Steve Ferguson who was named the recipient of the 2020 Licensing Executives Society Frank Barnes Mentor Award. Steve continues to teach and head our technology transfer and commercialization program. We’re proud of you, Steve!
Here’s to a safe and healthy 2021.
Lynn
Lynn Johnson Langer, Ph.D., M.B.A.
Executive Dean, Academic Programs
Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences at NIH