Scholarly Concentrations is an elective program through which Warren Alpert medical students undertake rigorous independent scholarship in a cross-disciplinary field of interest related to medicine, public health, engineering, or a biomedically relevant topic in the sciences, arts, or humanities.
The SC Program is a mentored, longitudinal program extending across all four academic years at the medical school. It represents an elective curricular element that provides students with additional opportunities to increase the skills and abilities defined by the medical education program objectives (Nine Abilities) through research, scholarly, and extracurricular experiences in one of twelve concentration areas. A major goal of the SC Program is to provide structure, resources and mentorship for students who choose to conduct research in basic, clinical, or translational science or in areas outside the traditional research track such as global health, medical humanities, health disparities, lifestyle/integrative medicine or medical education. The curriculum components of the program include, but are not limited to, concentration area meetings, weekly or monthly seminars, field trips, teaching opportunities, journal clubs, concentration related course electives and opportunities to distill information and orally present a summary of scholarly projects at annual academic poster symposium.