University of South Florida: Research Program Offerings

USF Research: The Louis de la Parte Florida Mental Health Institute

The National Science Foundation and the University of South Florida have provided the financial backing for the Research Institute in Behavioral Health, located at the Florida Mental Health Institute on the USF campus, since 2005. This program is also called the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU). Each year, around 75 undergraduates come together to work on summer research projects in various areas of behavioral health. Each year, many of the participants publish their work and present at conferences around the country. In 2009, four REU students won Outstanding Research Awards from the program, for work in the areas of differences in gender and race in relation to fathering expectations; effects of gender, age and ethnicity on the ways that antidepressants are prescribed and monitored; differences in ethnicity in eating disorders and dissatisfaction with body image; and the relationship between psychopathy and childhood abuse for child molesters and rapists.

USF School of Medicine: Summer Fellowships

Bridging the Gaps Community Health Internship

This program takes students aiming at careers in social services and health and gives them real-world experience in serving the poor and otherwise underserved. A seven-week, 40-hour-per-week program, this internship helps students collaborate with community organizations to devise individual projects. Non-profits in Allentown, Pennsylvania, match the students with their projects. Housing is provided, and interns also receive a stipend of $3,000. The focus of this program is educating the students about the various ways that the practice of medicine interacts with social service providers.

First-Year Medical Student Summer Research

This eight-week program pairs first-year USF medical students with faculty members in a variety of research projects that involve such outside organizations as the American Heart Association. Participants write a paper at the end of the project, and those papers are blown up into posters for the school’s Research Day, held each spring.

USF Health EdTech Fellowship

The purpose of this program is to use the experiences and perspectives of current students at the University of South Florida College of Medicine to develop and implement new ways to teach medical content. Research students collaborate with multimedia professionals and medical faculty to design ways to use the very latest in technology in conjunction with contemporary materials.

Diabetes Research Program

The National Institutes of Health sponsor this summer research program, which connects medical students with research scientists in such areas as obesity, physiology, hormone action, islet cell biology, or diabetes at one of the 16 Diabetes and Endocrinology Research Centers throughout the United States.

Community Health Field School – Costa Rica

Research happens at a part of the Monteverde Reserve Complex, a preserve guarding more than 100,000 acres of tropical rain forest. The University of South Florida and the Monteverde Institute have created this collaborative organization that brings in social and educational programming to Monteverde and gives students the chance to research the effects of globalization on health care, as well as other projects in health research.