Van Scoy named director of Penn State CTSI’s KL2 training program

Lauren Jodi Van Scoy has been named director of Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute’s (CTSI) KL2 program. In this role, Van Scoy will lead efforts to ensure a supportive interdisciplinary environment for recruiting and engaging talented faculty scholars who, with proper career development and clinical and/or translational research training, have the potential to become independently funded, successful, and ethical clinical and translational investigators. As such, Van Scoy will oversee the translational workforce core. As a member of CTSI’s Executive Council, she will also work to meet the overall aims of the CTSI, including focusing on rural health and encouraging grant writing and successful transitioning to research independence.

The KL2 program leverages the strengths of our CTSI’s rural environment, partnerships, and technologies to support scholars’ completion of a clinical and translational sciences (CTS) research practicum in rural health. Additionally, the program is committed to refining processes for the collection, analysis, and utilization of evaluative data to foster continuous quality improvement of the career development program.

“Coaching and encouraging junior faculty to maintain the confidence, grit, and grantspersonship skills needed to receive NIH or other funding has been among the most rewarding aspects of my career,” said Van Scoy. “I am excited by the KL2 program opportunity because serving in this leadership role would afford me an opportunity to give back to the university which has done so much to support my research career and development.”

Van Scoy is a professor of medicine, humanities and public health sciences at Penn State College of Medicine. As an NIH-funded clinician scientist with over 80 published peer-reviewed articles, she has built a broad background in designing, conducting, consulting and/or publishing research across a wide variety of fields including social science, behavioral science, communication science, education-based research, and clinical research. Her more current research expertise includes community-engaged research, qualitative and mixed methods, clinical trials, survey research, behavioral interventions, and implementation science. She has mentored and collaborated with researchers across 13 Penn State departments in addition to serving as a consultant in qualitative and mixed methods with partners across the country. This makes her well-suited and uniquely qualified to provide coaching and mentorship for KL2 scholars who represent a variety of fields.

“I am thrilled with the opportunity to work with LJ given her incredible research expertise, talent, and problem-solving abilities,” said CTSI Director Jen Kraschnewski. “LJ brings tremendous commitment to mentorship and her breadth of research experience make her the ideal candidate for this position in leading our early career faculty researchers.”

Penn State CTSI offers research support, tools and resources, consultative services, funding, training and education across all Penn State campuses and for researchers at every stage of their learning and career. It accomplishes much of this work, and its commitment to supporting a diverse, equitable and inclusive environment, within several core service areas — an administrative core and seven other core service areas including Education and Training (KL2 and TL Fellows), Research Methods, Informatics, Clinical Operations, Workforce Development, Pilot Awards and Community Engaged Research.