iSMART Program

Penn State CTSI’s is designed for researchers, by researchers. These trainings provide ongoing development, support, and peer mentorship for research staff and faculty teams. All experience levels and positions are welcome.

• “All teach, all learn” solution-focused program

• Research teams are encouraged to join, share knowledge, and discuss experiences

• Presentations by research staff and research office experts

• Easy-to-use resources shared with all registrants

Champions are experienced research staff who represent and share a variety of learned skills with colleagues (such as gift card distribution, qualitative coding, Electronic Medical Record queries, leveraging AI/Machine Learning). Champions are research staff who help to improve and translate research infrastructure into useful tools for the research community and who have:

• Mastered a research-related skillset;

• Served as the “go-to” resource for colleagues for a research-related process or task; or

• Developed instructions or standard operating procedures for yourself and your team to work more efficiently and effectively.

Champion Benefits:

• Gain recognition as a CTSI Research Champion!

• Receive a Champion Certificate and digital badge to put on your CV and email signature

• Feature your work in a CTSI newsletter spotlight

The online resource repository is a comprehensive, one-stop shop for all things related to research infrastructure and efficiency. The repository collates existing resources and serves as the main terminal for resources related to iSMART programs, topics and materials. The repository is reviewed annually and all materials are assessed by the relevant centralized offices to ensure accuracy.

The Accelerated Staff Assistance Program (ASAP) supports short-term or partial-effort staffing needs for funded Penn State faculty. ASAP provides trained research staff to support start-ups, maternity or sick leave, and other partial-effort needs.

ASAP Staff Support Services

ASAP staff can assist with items such as:

• Qualitative interviewing, coding and analysis

• Spanish translation for REDCap

• Participant screening, recruitment, consenting and data collection in English and Spanish;

• Internal Review Board submissions and document development;

• REDCap programming and data management;

• Regulatory compliance;

• Electronic medical record requests; and more!

DETAILS courses are designed to help research teams learn basic (101 courses) or advanced (201 courses) skills related to common research tools, techniques, methods or resources. 101 courses will focus on basic topic overview whereas 201 courses will take a deeper dive into topics. All courses include content relevant to both faculty and staff to understand each others’ roles related to each topic.

DETAILS courses are both skill-based courses (e.g., Internal Review Board-related topics, REDCap, hiring processes, data use agreements) as well as science-based courses (e.g., survey research, chart review research, educational research, mixed methods research, etc).