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Scientific Management Accelerating Research & Tenure (SMART)

The SMART program is a scientific leadership and management nanocourse for junior faculty who are at the early stages of building their own independent basic science or clinical research programs.

Program Goals

SMART is designed to help these investigators

  • Establish their research brand
  • Manage their teams
  • Avoid pitfalls
  • Navigate the landscape at UTSW and the larger research community nationally and internationally.

It will help jumpstart independent research careers of out-of-the gate principal investigators. The SMART course is a 1.5 days long and has two modules. 

Nanocourse Curriculum

Half-Day Module

A half-day module to build a toolkit for navigating UTSW as a junior faculty PI.

The module will guide junior faculty on how to navigate the academic landscape at UT Southwestern from the perspectives of department chairs and senior and junior faculty. The format will be panel discussions and short talks. Speakers and panelists include: David Russell, Sean Morrison, Eric Olson, Duojia Pan, Sandra Schmid, Neal Alto, Jane Johnson, Kim Orth, Dwight Towler, Ethan Halm, Rhonda Bassel-Duby, Suzanne Farmer, Lance Terada and junior faculty

Topics include:

  • Developing and communicating your vision
  • Knowing your strengths and developing people skills
  • Building your research program
  • Managing your research group
  • Negotiation and navigating conflict
  • Building your brand, collaborations, and networking
  • Promotion and tenure

Full-Day Module

A day-long interactive workshop to hone your scientific leadership and management skills.

The workshop introduces research management and leadership principles and reinforces topics discussed in SMART Module 1. The sessions will be interactive and provide practical guide on how to lead and manage your research team and program. It will include practice work to continue in real-life scenarios after the Workshop. This module is facilitated by Ed O’Neil, a nationally recognized external trainer in academia and biotech industries.

Why We Developed SMART for Junior Faculty PIs

UT Southwestern is highly invested in its faculty and offers programs to promote faculty success at multiple levels. At the institutional level, the Office of Faculty Development is committed to supporting development of all faculty.

FDD/OWC created the highly successful year-long Leadership Emerging in Academic Departments (LEAD) program in 2012 for clinicians, educators and research-intensive faculty. In 2018, four tenure track LEAD graduates, Drs. Mike Henne, Jenna Jewell, Jen Liou and Vincent Tagliabracci, proposed the creation of the SMART program as part of their LEAD Capstone Projects. Their rationales are based on their own experiences:

  • They recognized that launching a career as an independent investigator in a large academic medical center is exhilarating and also daunting. There are many unwritten rules. They needed new skills in leadership and management to influence others, negotiate and navigate difficult conversation, and set goals for research programs. They wished they had LEAD-like training as early out-of-the-gate junior faculty.
  • Junior faculty will benefit most from a mini-LEAD course customized for those beginning to lead research teams.
  • The skills for leading scientific teams can be learned, as evidenced by the LEADers own growth during their LEAD journey.
  • The need for scientific leadership and management training is affirmed by the increasing number of national and international training programs and guides on the topic.
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