Barbara Tafuto

My typical day is packed with responsibilities centered around running the Clinical Research Management Master's degree program. The foundation of my work is making sure all our courses are aligned with the needed competencies to run clinical research. Every time there are adjustments or changes within the FDA or within guidelines, we need to make sure our program is adjusted and we're providing the right courses. I work very closely with our faculty to make sure we're leveraging the best of their capabilities and knowledge to give the best to our students. I also advise and mentor our clinical research management students and the doctorate of Health Informatics students. I conduct research and teach. I've developed 5 courses: clinical trial data management, multiple analysis for clinical trials, and pharmacoinformatics. Once I took on the added role of program director, I now only teach two courses - one is a lit review course for doctorate students, and the other is Scientific Writing for the Translation of Medicine for our Master's in Clinical Research Management students, which is their capstone project or one of their options for a capstone project. What makes me most proud is my attention to the students and leading them to careers in clinical research. My students are trained to make sure clinical trials are run ethically, responsibly, efficiently, and professionally, making sure patients are safe. That's the heartbeat of medicine, and it's an unsung story. Many people just fall into the career, they don't deliberately go into it, so being able to train and educate them is a great honor.