2022 Recipients
The Anato-Bee: A Scholastic Competition in the Anatomical Sciences for High School Students
Principal Investigators: Jenna Hagerty, M.S., Ph.D., Norbert Myslinski, Ph.D., Dana Peterson, M.A., M.Ed., Ph.D., and Mary Piscura, Ph.D.
Amount Awarded: $50,000
This educational competition would be modeled after the extremely successful, International Brain Bee competitions for high school students. Since its inception twenty years ago, this neuroscience “spelling bee-style” competition annually engages over 25,000 students from more than 50 countries. The Anato-Bee would partner with those U.S. colleges and universities currently hosting local Brain Bee competitions to provide resources to their faculty and graduate students to host virtual anatomical sciences competitions in each state during the early spring of 2024. State winners would advance to four selected regional host institution sites where the culminating in-person competitions would be held during late spring of 2024. The selected regional host institutions would receive financial support from the grant to host these 2-day long competitions. Each regional competition would be identical in length and would disseminate identical question sets to the participants.
Anatomy Nights: Developing Resources for Public Engagement with Anatomy
Principal Investigator: Janet Philp, Jason Organ, Kat Sanders
Amount Awarded: $25,000
Anatomy Nights (Sanders et al 2022) was founded in 2018; it is an event format that brings the fundamental practice of dissection (non-human) into the public sphere and ensures that anatomists are involved in public engagement events about the human body in casual spaces such as bars and pubs. Since its inception, Anatomy Nights has reached venues around the world including Australia, Canada, Europe, New Zealand, and the USA. Funding is used to support the development of an AAA Anatomy Nights library of public engagement resources which can be used by educators to deliver premier anatomical educational events across the globe. The program will also showcase one of these events to a public audience at the AAA conference in 2023, and to run a delegate workshop at the 2024 AAA conference to introduce the wider membership to the resources that are available as a result of this project. These public events and workshops will continue to run for the next 4 years at AAA conferences to ensure the project is embedded within the AAA community. This will make public engagement in the hosting city a staple of AAA conferences, and equip participants to host their own local events to educate the public and engage them in understanding their own anatomy.
2021 Recipients
Histology Coloring Book
Principal Investigators: Tamara Franz-Odendaal and Karen Pinder
Amount Awarded: $50,000
This book will provide hands-on, interactive experiences that enable students to utilize active learning skills as they complete coloring correlates to the micro- anatomical structures (cells, tissues and organs) of the human body. It is known that coloring offers many advantages to learning as it is multisensory (engaging spatial and visual processing, and physical movement). It helps students see the exact boundaries between structures and how they connect with nearby structures. It is also a relaxing way to learn. The Histology Coloring Workbook will be illustrated by medical illustrators and published, making it available to students and educators across the globe.
"We are delighted to be recipients of a AAA Innovations Grant, which will permit us to develop and implement a novel and creative approach to the teaching and learning of micro-anatomy (histology)," say the PIs, who met at the University of Cape Town in 1997. "This grant funding will be utilized to expand the positive impact of this core foundational science in medical and allied health sciences curricula, to the benefit of the association, its membership and other international audiences of educators and learners."
High School Anatomy Training Program (HSATP)
Principal Investigator: Habiba Chirchir
Amount Awarded: $50,000
The intention of the HSATP is to train educators on hands on, problem-based learning and dissection methods that they will implement in their high school anatomy classes to prepare the learners for collegiate anatomical studies and health care fields. We propose to host three HSATP training workshops at Marshall University over the course of three semesters for 18 teachers (i.e., 18 schools) resulting in the training of about 360 students. Teaching materials (e.g., preserved specimens for dissections, anatomical models, 3D software), a dissection skill set and solicit additional specimens for dissection from the community during hunting season, will be provided. Our proposed project provides an informal training component in which students will attend anatomy summer campus- focusing on problem-based learning. The project will include follow up assessments for the teachers and students during and at the end of the HSTAP to identify the efficacy of the program.
"We are very excited that our project on the development and implementation of this anatomy training program for high schoolers in WV was funded," says Chirchir. "This program will be impactful to young West Virginian students’ and their teachers including minority and socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. Through training of teachers on hands-on, problem-based learning and dissection methods, the implementation of the anatomy training program will prepare learners for collegiate anatomical studies and health care fields."
The Global Neuroanatomy Network (GNN)
Principal Investigator: Mikaela Stiver and Melissa Carroll
Amount Awarded: $50,000
The GNN aims to be an international platform where members can access and share support by exchanging expertise and curated peer-reviewed teaching resources, including a database of clinical cases developed by our core team through a lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Moreover, it aims to support global equity and accessibility in neuroanatomy education by providing educators with free, pedagogically sound resources in various formats, sizes, and languages that incorporate content that is both culturally sensitive and regionally relevant to members around the world. See all team members here.
"On behalf of the entire Global Neuroanatomy Network (GNN) team, we are tremendously grateful for the AAA’s support through the Innovations Program," say the GNN PIs, "The idea for this initiative grew organically from an informal neuroanatomy working group that formed on Twitter, recognizing the need to create an online hub for resource and experience sharing to support neuroanatomy educators around the world. The GNN aims to complement existing AAA-funded projects — such as the Virtual Microscopy Database (VMD) and Virtual Dissection Databased (VDD) — with a specific emphasis on creating and disseminating neuroanatomy resources that are accessible and applicable to a wide range of global contexts.”
Developing and Elevating Leaders with Tools for Advancement (DELTA)
Principal Investigators: Rebecca Lufler and Lela Giannaris
Amount Awarded: $50,000
This program will consist of three parts: (1) a 3-day retreat held in summer 2023, with invited speakers, face-to-face mentoring sessions and workshops, (2) virtual mentored projects, and (3) final project presentations. During the 3-day retreat, the DELTA program will bring together leaders in faculty development and anatomy to cover topics including: development of leadership skills and opportunities, negotiation skills, effective communication skills, feedback, bias education, wellness, and mentoring. Each participant will be assigned a mentor to meet with monthly throughout the program as they work toward achieving their leadership goals. Participants will become equipped with critical skills for career advancement, continued professional development and increased engagement within AAA.
"We are looking forward to sharing our leadership training and cultivating the leadership growth of AAA members," say the PIs of the project. "The DELTA program creates a longitudinal, mentored, leadership professional development opportunity specifically for underrepresented and diverse groups in academia. Given the staggering statistics documenting low numbers of women and underrepresented groups in advanced academic and leadership positions, there is a need for a leadership program to make an immediate, long-lasting, and wide-spread impact - DELTA is that change."