Report

Introduction

Research and Graduate Studies is of strategic value for strengthening and advancing the academic programs of the College of Veterinary Medicine, Nursing and Allied Health (CVMNAH). Biomedical research and graduate studies are inherently interlinked and mutually supportive. A newly created office of an Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies reflects the significance of this new strategic position. The Office of Research and Graduate Studies is responsible for:

a) research and sponsored programs,
b) degree granting programs and
c) non-degree postgraduate studies.

The Goal is to create a world-class research and graduate studies academic enterprise at CVMANH dedicated to train African &endash; American and other scientists and scholars in the creation of new knowledge. Via the "one medicine" concept, we plan to expand the biosciences, thereby creating bridges between veterinary medicine and the agricultural and food sciences on one side and human health and welfare on the other side.
The objectives are to promote research and graduate studies so as:

a) to advance the biosciences especially in selected areas of molecular sciences and biotechnology. Building bridges across the disciplines especially with agricultural and food sciences, bioengineering, bio-business and related disciplines.
b) to promote the "one medicine concept". Building bridges to connect veterinary medicine with human health to exploit the new health technologies and biotechnologies.
c) to continue to advance veterinary medicine in the new millennium.

Vision and Goals

By the end of this decade, to create a world-class research and graduate studies enterprise to include research geared to:

* advance the biosciences especially in selected areas of molecular sciences, genomics and biotechnology.
* building bridges across the disciplines especially with agricultural, environmental and food sciences and bio-engineering disciplines.
* promoting the "one medicine concept" by building bridges to connect veterinary medicine with human health to address health disparities in minority populations.
* research, education and outreach to advance professional and graduate education including the emerging PhD program in Integrative Biosciences.

The overall goal and vision of the College will be under-girded by strong ethical values supported by hard work and scientific excellence and respect for life and the environment, all dedicated to serve the global community.
A strategic task force of the College convened in April of 1999 and developed a plan for strengthening and advancing research and graduate studies. Using that as a guide, we have developed a strong and strategic infrastructure of administrative and academic resources that are geared to promote a first-rate veterinary and biomedical education, research and service. Using these strategic plans along with further refinements, several key plans are in progress.

WHAT IS IN PROGRESS?
Team Oriented Research
First and foremost was the move to institute and promote team oriented research initiatives. The nature of current problems is transdisciplinary and the need to respond via interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary and integrative team oriented approaches is well recognized and encouraged in the College. With that in mind, the following teams and areas of focus have been identified and are in progress.
Team oriented areas of Research and Graduate/Post-graduate Education

* Infectious Diseases and Emerging Problems
(Including Bioterrorism)
* Food Safety, Food Security and Health
* Molecular Biology and Genomics
* Toxicology and Environmental Health
* Computational Epidemiology, Bioinformatics and Risk Analysis
* Reproduction and Theriogenology
* International Health and Tropical Animal Medicine
* Human/Animal Companionship and Interactions
* One Medicine Approach & Community Health
* Clinical Studies
* Health Disparity Studies

Policies and Procedures for Research & Advanced Studies

In order to streamline and coordinate all the College's activities, policies and procedures have been developed and shared with faculty, department heads and the administration. Funded Research Projects have increased significantly. To support these research and graduate studies plans, policies and procedures were developed and a variety of infrastructures were created and further improvements are underway.

Infrastructure/Capacity Building (Physical)

Williams-Bowie Hall: This facility (64,000 sq. ft.), houses most of the biomedical research activities of the CVMNAH. The first floor (30,000 ft2) houses faculty offices, the International Center for Tropical Animal Health (ICTAH), the Audiovisual/Auto-tutorial (AV/AT) Center, the Biomedical Information Management Systems (BIMS) offices, the Biomedical Student Computing Laboratory and the Center for Computational Epidemiology (CCE). The second floor (24,903 ft2) houses a large core instrumentation laboratory, core diagnostic laboratories, a laboratory support area, a tissue culture suite, a radioisotope laboratory, a total of nine BL-2 research laboratories, a semen analysis laboratory, two cold rooms, glass wash room, media preparation room, dark room, a surgical and recovery suite, and offices for faculty, visiting faculty and staff. The remaining approximately 10,000 ft2 of the building is scheduled to become a laboratory animal holding facility.

Instrumentation and laboratories

A Centralized Core Instruments Laboratory already in operation at CVMNAH featuring the following major instrumentation: Spectrophotometer, Ultracentrifuge, High Performance Liquid Chromatography, used in chemical separation, purification, identification and quantification of compounds), Gas Chromatograph, Flowcytometer (allows the measurement of multiple physical characteristics of a single cell).
Additional laboratories include:

a) Core Tissue Culture laboratory equipped with biological safety cabinets class type A/B3, tissue culture Co2 incubator and inset cells incubator,
b) Core Molecular Biology Laboratory,
c) Semen laboratory equipped with state-of-the-art instruments (Toxicology IVOS System and related software) for establishing computer assisted semen analysis (CASA) for the rat and mouse.

All laboratories in the Centralized Research Building (Williams-Bowie Hall) are equipped with biological safety cabinets.

Resources in Epidemiology and Bioinformatics

Through the Biomedical Information Management Systems (BIMS) and its research counterpart, the Center for Computational Epidemiology, Bioinformatics and Risk Analysis (CCEBRA) of CVMNAH, resources for exploiting information technology (IT) to advance biomedical research, education and outreach are in place. With grant support from several federal agencies, foundations and industry, the team continues to create and expand the use of cutting edge IT resources in such areas as Integrated Biomedical Information Systems, Computer Based Biomedical Education, Internet and World Wide Web resources, Computer Modeling, and Networking.

Infrastructure/Capacity Building (Information Technology and the WWW)

A comprehensive Website for Research & Graduate Studies for the College has been developed and can be accessed at:

http://compepid.tuskegee.edu.  or http:www.onemedicine.tuskgee.edu

Core Curriculum for Graduate Program

A new core curriculum for Graduate Studies has been approved and implemented.

Collaborations and partnerships

Cooperation/Collaboration/Partnerships/ are continuing internally with the College of Agricultural, Environmental and Natural Sciences. External collaboration is also continuing with several USDA agencies, more specifically APHIS, ARS and FSIS. One good example of collaboration between our College, the USDA and other universities is an ongoing project to assess the risk of introduction of Bovine Spongifoirm Encephalopathy (BSE) into the USA. This joint project involved the Harvard University Center for Risk Analysis, three USDA agencies (APHIS, FSIS and ORACBA) as well as the School of Veterinary Medicine's Center for Computational Epidemiology. Other partnerships include the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), The University of Maryland College of Engineering, Auburn University College of Veterinary Medicine, Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine, Michigan State University and others.

A new PhD Program in Integrative Biosciences

One of our key strategic initiative was to: Develop a plan to implement a joint Ph.D. program that relies on areas of strength and mutual collaboration between the College of Veterinary Medicine, Nursing and Allied Health (CVMNAH) and the College of Agricultural, Environmental and Natural Sciences (CAENS) by the Fall of 2006 and create a first class research and graduate studies program that will receive national prominence amongst HBCUs by the Year 2010 by graduating at least 3 Ph.D.s per year.
This is both an exemplary model for collaboration between the two Colleges as well as ground breaking and farsighted commitment to address several issues of the Life Sciences here at Tuskegee University. The College of Veterinary Medicine, Nursing & Allied Health and the College of Agricultural, Environmental & Natural Sciences gave been working tirelessly to get this of the ground. Some significant and specific results are as follow: The two Colleges in a strategic planning meeting held in the summer of 1999 agreed that the name of the PhD program would be "Integrative Biosciences". It will include the Biomedical Sciences and Food and Environmental Sciences at its core. The two deans have now developed a full-fledged document for the PhD program.

Laboratory Research Animal Facility

To under-gird both the emerging PhD program as well as to strengthen the current graduate program, the Dean succeeded in obtaining grants from the NIH to create a new and major Laboratory Animal Facility. This is consistent with one of the key strategic plan's Implementation Activity #6 that is directed to: "Develop plans to establish a laboratory animal research facility that will be accredited by the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC). The laboratory animal resource will be critical towards launching the planned PhD program and advancing biomedical research within the university at large. The overall goal for laboratory animal research is broad in scope and includes companion and food animals as well as traditional lab animals such as rats and mice.

Annual Biomedical Research Symposia and Related Scholarly Seminar Series

In June of 2002, the Third Annual Biomedical symposium was held at the Kellogg Conference Center. This symposium serves as a medium for sharing research and related scholarly activities both within the College as well as with others. The theme for the first biomedical Research Symposium was entitled: "Celebrating excellence in Biomedical Research…the past, the Present and the Future". The theme for the third Symposium was entitled: "Advancing Biomedical Research Through multidisciplinary Teams and Collaborations".
The fourth annual research symposium, held in June of 2003 had the theme of "Eliminating Health Disparities in Minority Communities". We believe that the overall strategy for advancing biomedical research, in this new century, is through transdisciplinary teams and creative partnerships and collaborations. With that in mind, this annual symposium brings together experts from diverse fields and institutions, both national and international, to address the thematic topic of "Eliminating Health disparities in Minority communities" as well as other scientific issues that shape current scientific endeavors.
As an ongoing scholarly activity, a Seminar Series was launched with a renewed focus on Research & Graduate Studies and other scholarly activities of the College of Veterinary Medicine, Nursing and Allied Health.

International Activities

A project funded by USAID Africa Trade and Investment Program (ATRIP) at Tuskegee University has progressed well during this second project year (2002 &endash; 2003) and has accomplished nearly all of its planned activities and milestones that were planned for year two. Working closely with USDA/APHIS and African governments and universities, Tuskegee University provided three regional workshops on Advanced Risk Analysis and Modelling and is training two graduate students, all focused on developing the sanitary and phytosanitary infrastructure necessary for Africa to participate in global trade. A total of 60 participants from 15 Sub-Saharan African countries attended these two week Advanced Risk Analysis and Modelling Workshops. Sixteen technical experts from Tuskegee University and USDA/APHIS served as instructors.
Risk analysis and SPS Workshops on Advanced Risk Analysis and Modelling Analysis were conducted in each of three regions; one each in eastern, western, and southern Africa. The workshop in Eastern Africa was held June 1 - 14, 2003 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Twenty four participants attended this Workshop, including five (5) from Kenya, five (5) from Uganda, and fourteen (14) from Ethiopia. For the second workshop, held August 16 &endash; 26, 2003, in Accra, Ghana, five countries sent 19 representatives. Nigeria had three participants, Ghana had eight, Mali one, Ivory Coast two, Senegal had three and one participant came from Uganda. The third workshop, held in Pretoria, South Africa, October 19 &endash; November 1, 2003 had twelve participants from South Africa, two from Namibia, one from Swaziland, six from Botswana, and two each from Malawi and Zambia for a total of 25 participants. In summary, we have trained a total of 69 scientists and administrators from 15 Sub-Saharan Africa countries.
In addition to the workshops, the project provided each participant with six CDROMs including Tuskegee's on-line risk analysis course, and a workbook with examples of food safety and plant and animal risk assessments, training exercises and literature references. The on-line risk analysis course is accessible on the Internet at: http://compepid.tuskegee.edu/ATRIP/index.htm. All relevant project information including the full proposal, technical materials, exercises, and risk assessment examples are available at the website. Tuskegee's complete set on internet-based on-line courses includes risk analysis, epidemiology and biomedical statistics.

Focus on Rural Health Disparities

Tuskegee University is partnering with The University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, and has established Tuskegee's Center for Rural Health Disparities in Alabama's Black Belt (Project Export). The overall goal of Project Export is to identify and reduce (if possible eliminate) the underlying causes of higher levels of disease and disability in racial and ethnic minorities in the Black Belt region of Alabama. Six core areas are accomplishing the following all targeted to minimize health disparities.
Project Export at Tuskegee University operates via six cores to accomplish its objectives.
Through the Administrative core and other corees, it provides cohesiveness for the campus scientific community to come together to address this monumental challenge of reducing health disparities. Several multidisciplinary meetings were held involving the biomedical sciences, behavioral and social sciences, agricultural and food sciences and bioethics. Promoted interactions and between TU and. Tuskegee University (TU) and UAT faculty and scientists cemented opportunities for collaboration through several meetings and developed strategies for addressing health disparities.
Through the Shared Resources Core of Project Export, it has supported a successful Biomedical Research Symposium with a focus upon eliminating health Disparities. Invited participants from the Black Belt Counties, collaborating university (UAT), other Export Project funded universities (Howard and Morehouse), the CDC and ATSDR, the State of Alabama Health Department, the local Macon County Health Department, selected universities (University of Alabama, Birmingham, Tulane University), USDA and FDA participants and State of Alabama Agriculture Commissioner participated in the Symposium. International collaborators from University of West Indies, POAHO/WHO and from Southern Africa (Botswana) also participated. Project Export provided opportunities for several faculty and staff to attend meetings dealing with health disparities in minority populations as well as in topics dealing with rural health. Disseminated information about Project Export throughout via print news media, and TV and on the Internet. As part of strengthening and enhancing the Shared Resources Core component, using previous NIH grants, construction of a Research Lab Animal facility is on track and is expected to be completed by the end of September of 2003. The completion of this resource will further expand the Shared Resources infrastructure at TU and promote more multidisciplinary and animal based biomedical research that can have a positive impact on addressing health disparities.
Through the Research Core and Pilot Research Core it has enabled focused planning and organizing to effectively implement proposed research activities of Project Export. These included cardiovascular component, genomics and vaccine component, and epidemiologic research component. Promoted community-Based research on the possible role of asbestos in water and cancer in an African American Community (ATSDR/CDC). Initiated Pilot research projects that involves community-based research
New Grants and new proposals are underway to seek additional grants: Submitted and succeeded in obtaining a Center for Excellence Grant for Minority Veterinary Medical Education from DHHS (Amount). Also succeeded in obtaining an NIH/RCMI grant that focuses on addressing health disparities. In collaboration with the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa and several other universities developing a multiinstitutional proposal TU and UA are collaborating with other Alabama and Georgia institutions (including The University of Alabama at Birmingham, Emory University and Jacksonville State University) on a proposal to be submitted to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for a major research grant investigating health consequences and issues of environmental justice related to PCB contamination in Anniston, AL. Two scientists from TU attended a two day Workshop organized by the Morehouse School of Medicine designed to develop expertise in accessing MEDICARE and MEDICAID databases to carryout epidemiologic research on health disparities. Plans are underway to submit a proposal in this area during the 2003 &endash; 2004 project year.
Bioethics planning for Masters degrees (MPH and MS) is underway. We are training three African &endash; American graduate students in Environmental Health and Toxicology and in the epidemiologic assessment of risk and environmental health. These graduate students, upon completion of their Master's degree, will add to the needed manpower that can be engaged to reducing the scientific gap that can in the long-run address the health disparity challenge. Active planning to launch the PhD Program in Integrative Biosciences in Year 2004 is also underway.
Through the Outreach Core, the project is promoting activities throughout the Black belt Counties of Alabama (Extension, CAENS, Vet School West Alabama Project).

Summary

The infrastructure we have created to advance biomedical research and the fuller use of information technology throughout the veterinary medical and health sciences enterprise at Tuskegee University is of the highest order. Collaboration with governmental agencies, the private sector and across disciplines both within Tuskegee University and other universities is growing. With the newly established Tuskegee University National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care, emphasis on veterinary and medical ethics in every dimension of our academic and research endeavors will expand. At the dawn of the new millennium, the CVMNAH is therefore well positioned for the challenges of the new century.