Dean's Scholar Awards

Purpose: To foster a culture of scholarship, academic dissemination, and research visibility among MSUCOM students and affiliated trainees. The Dean’s Scholar Awards aim to recognize and incentivize students or trainees who have either: successfully published their work in a peer-reviewed journal or made their work publicly available on a preprint server and submitted it to a peer-reviewed journal.

ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA: 

To be eligible for the Dean’s Scholar Awards, candidates must meet the following criteria:

• Trainee Status:

  • Award 1: Must be an osteopathic medical student at MSUCOM or Resident or Fellow in a GME Alliance affiliate program. Individuals who graduate just weeks prior to the Research Day are still eligible. 

  • Award 2:  Must be a DO/PhD student at MSUCOM, or a PhD student or a post-doc in a COM faculty lab.

• Previous Research Day Presentation: The applicant must have presented a poster or oral presentation about this same study at the current or a prior MSUCOM Research Day Conference. 

• Publication: The scholarly work must be published in a peer-reviewed journal (and indexed in PubMed, Scopus, or World of Science) or posted on a pre-print server (e.g., bioRxiv, medRxiv) and submitted to publication at the time of award competition participation.

• Type of Scholarly Work: Eligible scholarly work includes original research (clinical, basic science, or medical education), quality improvement projects, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses. Case reports are not eligible. 

• Authorship: To be eligible, the applicant must have been the first (and presenting) author at the current annual MSUCOM Research Day Conference or a previous MSUCOM Research Day Conference.

• Submission Deadline: March 31, 2026.

• Submission Link: Click Here to Submit

   

SELECTION CRITERIA: 

The submissions will be reviewed by the organizers of the MSUCOM Research Day Conference. The MSUCOM Dean’s Scholar Awards shall be granted based on the following criteria:

• Significance: Impact on biomedical science or technology, medical education, patient care, or improving healthcare systems. 

• Rigor: Demonstrates high quality, robust study design, sound methodology, and data analysis.

• Publication status: Preference will be given to works that are 1) published (or in press), then 2) Preprint + submitted (with proof of submission)- submitted and also publicly available in a pre-preprint server.

• Authorship: First author then co-author (based on relative position in author list).