TY - JOUR T1 - COVID-19 Deterred Career Path of Our Undergraduate Neuroscience Students: Educators’ Perspective JF - eneuro JO - eNeuro DO - 10.1523/ENEURO.0384-22.2022 VL - 9 IS - 5 SP - ENEURO.0384-22.2022 AU - Ami P. Raval AU - Helen M. Bramlett Y1 - 2022/09/01 UR - http://www.eneuro.org/content/9/5/ENEURO.0384-22.2022.abstract N2 - Almost every industry had a deer-in-the-headlights moment when the COVID-19 pandemic forced the world to a halt. The education field was faced with an unprecedented situation. How do we continue our instruction with this bizarre reality that we must accept as the new normal? Educators from kindergarten to university levels had to urgently adapt their ways to keep the mission of education alive. While some teaching methods remained effective despite remote learning and “Zoom school,” some were simply not possible to implement given social distancing and occupancy restriction guidelines at the time. As an undergraduate neuroscience educator, one daunting dilemma was how to continue laboratory research training of our young neuroscientists. Universities across the country had to send students home and restrict access to campuses. Many of our undergraduate neuroscience students are on premedical tracks, and these restrictions added much more complexity to their goals of meeting medical school requirements of shadowing physicians or getting volunteer positions in ongoing clinical research. These research training exposures are essential, not only for future medical or graduate school admissions, but more importantly these early training experiences help them to decide the career paths they want to pursue to continue their postbaccalaureate education. As their professors, we felt their panic as their whole plans to prepare themselves for graduate or medical schools flew from their grasp because of this global situation which was out of their control.The task to involve undergraduates in much needed scientific research training is already difficult. The … ER -