Turn research into social impact

The minor in translational research prepares you with knowledge and skills to use research to improve people’s lives through interventions, practices, and policies while also integrating knowledge from communities and practice settings to inform research. You'll apply translational research skills and approaches in your respective courses of study. The minor prepares you for social impact across careers that include STEM and medicine, public health, social sciences, law and public policy.

Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research

This program is offered through the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research.

Overview

Students in any major from any college are eligible to minor in Translational Research.

The minor consists of 15 credits:

  • Two core courses (6 credits)
    • HE 2300 Introduction to Translational Research (fall semester)
    • HE 3400 Community-Engaged Translational Research Methods (spring semester)
  • Two electives (6 credits)
    • choose from a list of classes that discuss the link between research, practice, and/or policy and further your practice and knowledge of translational research in various fields
  • Field experience (2 credits)
    • Select from a variety of field experiences that have concurrent/related credit-bearing courses to provide practical application of translational research and will be the basis of reflection in the capstone class
  • HE 4400 Translational Research Capstone (1 credit)
    • Asynchronous capstone course, taken after your field experience to reflect on it and apply what you've done to translational research principles
    • Can only be completed after completing a field experience and one of the core courses

Interested students should start by taking the two required core courses:

  • HE 2300 Introduction to Translational Research
  • HE 3400 Community-Engaged Translational Research Methods

Note: These courses do not have to be taken in sequence. Learn more about how to complete the minor.

The minor is self-guided. Some elective courses require prerequisites so students should plan carefully.

Policies

  • Courses must be completed as letter grade with a grade of C or higher.
  • Courses offered only as S/U are accepted but must not exceed a total of 3 credits toward the credit requirement for the minor.
  • Only a maximum of 3 credits can overlap with another major or minor requirement. This means that only 3 credits can fulfill requirements for the Translational Research minor AND another major or minor that you are planning to take (e.g., out of all your Translational Research minor courses, only one 3-credit elective can also be used to fulfill another major or minor)
  • No substitutions will be made for the required core courses.
  • Transfer credits will be considered on a case-by-case basis

Courses

This introductory course is designed for students interested in community-engaged research that improves human lives. Specifically, this course will instruct on translational research in the social and behavioral sciences. Translational research is conducted in bi-directional stages, which include:

  • basic discoveries
  • feasibility studies
  • efficacy studies
  • effectiveness studies
  • population impact and policy

Translational research is used in careers in STEM and medicine, public health, social sciences, public policy, and beyond. The class will move through the five translational research stages. You will learn about each stage plus innovative research being done at each stage by the instructor and guest lecturers. Ethical considerations of working in communities will be discussed. Along the way, you will complete hands-on assignments that will help you become translational researchers in your own fields of study.

This multidisciplinary course provides you with methodological training in community-engaged translational research. You'll learn how to build equitable partnerships with communities to move research from early-stage question development through intervention design, pilot testing, real-world implementation, and population-level impact. You'll do this by learning fundamental methods that can be used throughout the translational research process, such as how to conduct interviews, focus groups, needs assessment surveys, photovoice projects, and other participatory data collection methods. You'll also learn how to design effective interventions in regard to study design, evaluation methods, and ethical community collaboration.

Choose from the following classes.

Courses in Cornell Human Ecology

  • DEA 2020 Introduction to Sustainable Design
  • DEA 2025 Impactful Graphics: Visual Communication for Social Impac
  • DEA 2203 StudioSHIFT
  • DEA 2422 Making Green: Sustainable Product Design Studio
  • DEA 2700 Healthy Places: Design, Planning and Public Health
  • DEA 3308 Positive Design Studio
  • DEA 3510 Human Factors and Inclusive Design
  • DEA 3530 Planning and Managing the Workplace: Evidence-Based Design and Organizational Ecology
  • DEA/FSAD 4025 Design for Change: Imagining Decolonial Futures
  • DEA 4500 Policy Meets Design: High-Impact Facilities of the 21st Century
  • DEA 4590 Problem-Seeking through Programming
  • DEA/FSAD 4800 Ethical Design: Engine of Positive Change
  • FSAD 3200 Global Textile and Apparel Sustainability
  • FSAD 3990 Smart Clothing: Design and Programming
  • HD 2180 Human Development: Adulthood and Aging
  • HD 2400 Introduction to Community Psychology
  • HD 2510 Social Gerontology: Aging and the Life Course
  • HD 2650 Psychology and Law
  • HD 3150 Language and Power
  • HD 3190 Memory and the Law
  • HD 3290 Self-regulation Across the Life Span
  • HD 3300 Developmental Psychopathology
  • HD 3310 Psychology of Gender
  • HD 3490 The Science of Well-Being
  • HD 3530 Risk and Opportunity Factors in Childhood and Adolescence
  • HD 3700 Adult Psychopathology
  • HD 4240 Stress, Emotion, and Health
  • HD 4310 Mind, Self, and Emotion
  • HD 4530 Affective Science
  • HD 4540 Creativity and Its Development
  • HD 4560 Black Girlhood Studies: Rememory, Representation, and Re-Imagination
  • HD 4670 Advanced Seminar in Mood Disorders
  • HD 4720 Current Research in Emotion, Cognition, and Brain
  • HD 4850 Professional Development in Translational Research
  • HD 4940 Moral Psychology in Action
  • HE 2222 Translating the Science of Purpose
  • HE 4060 Special Topics in Translational Research
  • NS 2450 Social Science Perspectives on Food and Nutrition
  • NS 2600 Introduction to Global Health
  • NS 3060 Nutrition and Global Health
  • NS 4450 Toward a Sustainable Global Food System: Food Policy for Developing Countries
  • NS 4500 Public Health Nutrition
  • NS 4510 Nutrition and Health Equity
  • NS 4570 Health, Poverty, and Inequality: A Global Perspective
  • NS 4998 Engaged Learning About Policy Making in Washington D.C.

Courses in other colleges

  • COMM 2760 Persuasion and Social Influence
  • COMM 3189 Taking America’s Pulse: Creating and Conducting a National Opinion Poll
  • COMM 3760 Planning Communication Campaigns
  • COMM 4201 Information Policy: Applied Research and Analysis
  • COMM 4760 Population Health Communication
  • COMM 4860 Risk Communication
  • PUBPOL 2050 Critical Perspectives in Global Health and Policy
  • PUBPOL 2120 Disruptive and Emerging Technologies: Policy and Practice
  • PUBPOL 2250 Social Problems in the United States
  • PUBPOL 2350 The U.S. Health Care System
  • PUBPOL 3180 Health Disparities
  • PUBPOL/GDEV 3280 Fundamentals of Population Health
  • PUBPOL 3320 Mental Health Care Delivery and Policy
  • PUBPOL 3330 Children’s Law and Policy
  • GDEV 2200 Introduction to Adult Learning
  • GDEV 3030 FoodCycle: Systems Thinking Toward Circular Economy for Organic Resources

Complete a translational research field experience with a concurrent or related credit-bearing course that allows you to apply translational research in a practical setting. The list below are the pre-approved field experiences. Please note: Students identify and apply to these opportunities independently.

You should speak with Minor Director Kristen Elmore or Faculty Advisor Navika Gangrade to ensure that your experience and its course credits fit the requirements.  

These will also be the basis of reflection in the Translational Research Capstone class.

This asynchronous course, which is hosted primarily on Canvas, is a capstone course for the Translational Research minor. This course provides you with a structured opportunity to reflect on and synthesize your recent translational research field experience. Through guided discussion posts, you will critically examine how their work aligns with stages of the translational research spectrum, consider how community perspectives shaped (or could have shaped) research and implementation processes, and analyze ethical considerations that emerged in real-world practice. You will also present a poster of your work at either the CHE Summer Experience Symposium (fall) or the BCTR Translational Research Symposium (spring). Emphasis is placed on making explicit connections between experiential learning and core principles of community-engaged translational research.

Note: Capstone can only be completed after completing a field experience and one of the core courses.

Completing the minor

The minor is self-guided. Some elective courses require prerequisites, so you should plan carefully.

Before declaring your intent to minor, you must complete one of the two core courses:

  • HE 2300 Introduction to Translational Research, or
  • HE 3400 Community-Engaged Translational Research Methods

After you successfully completing one of the core courses, you can submit the Intent to Minor in Translational Research form. 

Before you submit the form, we highly recommended meeting with a minor advisor to discuss your course plan and the minor requirements. To schedule a meeting, email bctrminor [at] cornell.edu (bctrminor[at]cornell[dot]edu).

You must submit the Intent to Minor form before the add/drop deadline in your final semester.

If your field experience is not one of the pre-approved experiences listed above, you must submit the Field Experience Approval form for review. We will review the form to determine whether the field experience and associated credits can count toward the minor.

You can submit this form at any time, but we encourage you to submit it before the experience.

Submit the Field Experience Completion form after you complete your field experience (regardless of the type of experience).

You must submit this form and complete one of the core courses before you can register for HE 4400 Translational Research Capstone.


 

Submit this form (link coming soon) during the semester in which you plan to graduate.

  • For May graduates: by March 15
  • For December graduates: by October 15

We will use the current version of requirements to evaluate the completion of the minor. If you submitted the Intent to Minor in Translational Research form, you can request to use the earlier version of requirements in effect at the time you submitted the form. 

After we verify that you completed all requirements for the minor, we will notify your college registrar. Your final transcript will indicate that you earned a minor in Translational Research.

Administration

Director of the Translational Research minor

Kristen Elmore
Executive Director, Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research 

Faculty advisor

Navika Gangrade
Lecturer, Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research

Coordinator

Jennifer Duque
Student Programs Coordinator, Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research

Contact

bctrminor [at] cornell.edu (bctrminor[at]cornell[dot]edu)