Robert Taylor, PhD, Co-Investigator
As a Co-Director of MIWI, Dr. Taylor will devote 1.0 summer months to this supplemental project to support the integration of methods and training approaches for ADRD into the MIWI program.
Dr. Taylor is the Sheila Feld Collegiate Professor of Social Work and expert in the field of gerontology. In September 2020, with the passing of James Jackson, he became PI of the Michigan Center for Urban African American Aging Research (MCUAAAR); previously he had directed the Research Education Core of MCUAAAR for two decades. He is also a faculty associate with the Program for Research on black Americans at the Institute for Social Research. Dr. Taylor has been Co-PI on several grants from the National Institute of Mental Health on the correlates of mental health and mental illness among Black Americans, including the
National Survey of American Life, which is the only major national study of the prevalence of mental illness among Black Americans. Since 1998 he has led two summer workshops focused on African American Social Science Research: the PRBA Graduate Student Mentoring Workshop and the MCUAAAR Summer Workshop. These workshops, which primarily engage racial/ethnic minority trainees, address seven elements critical to academic research: 1) publishing in peer review journals, 2) writing grant proposals to the NIH, 3) the tenure process, 4) ethical conduct of research, 5) successful mentoring and collaborative relationships, 6) recent developments in a variety of research areas and, most importantly, 7) how to navigate the academy.
Dr. Taylor will work with Dr. Mezuk and the MIWI leadership the to recruit junior investigators (“Scholars”) interested in ADRD to MIWI, serve as Core Faculty in the Summer Institute, connect Scholars to appropriate Consultant co-mentors, serve as the Primary Mentor to several Scholars in each cohort, and provide year-long support to the Scholars through an online community through the MIWI website (e.g., occasional webinars, discussion boards). He will work with the MIWI leadership team to monitor and evaluate the success of the Training Program, and they will collaboratively identify activities or elements to modify the program if indicated to improve the experience for Scholars.
