by Riccardo Soffietti, EAN Education Committe Chair
Dear Colleagues and Friends
This year has so far been a busy one for everyone involved in education at EAN, with plenty of exciting new projects joining the traditional fixtures in our education calendar. As Chair of the EAN Education Committee, it is my pleasure to give you a brief update on some of our recent activities and to remind you about our brand new programmes with deadlines still open.
June was an especially exciting month for us, as we had the privilege of launching two fantastic new projects. First, our new Student Teaser Fellowship, which is open for applications until 30 September. We have been increasing our focus on students recently, with the aim of offering more ways for young people studying medicine to explore our specialty. Anyone with EAN student membership (free of charge, by the way) who is from an EAN member country and has completed their first year of medical school is eligible to apply for this new fellowship, which provides a golden opportunity for special insight into neurology by means of either a four-week stay at a neurology department or a special training programme – including financial support. I am excited about the great, career-enhancing experiences this fellowship is going to offer and am sure it is going to be a very popular programme.
The second new item on the EAN Education menu is our Mentorship Programme. This one has been an EAN priority for a while and we are delighted to see it launched. As you would expect from a mentorship programme, the aim is to help early-career neurologists to unlock their potential by pairing them up with neurology veterans who can provide guidance and advice. Such programmes can be hugely rewarding for mentors too, giving them a chance to develop their mentorship skills and make a valuable contribution to supporting the next generation of neurology professionals. Our first ‘matching date’ is coming soon, on 15 September, and we are hoping for a lot of applications from both prospective mentees (who must be EAN members) and potential mentors (open to all). If you are interested in taking part on either side of this programme, I encourage you to visit the Mentorship Programme page for all the information you need.
Returning to our longer-running programmes, the deadline is fast approaching for the Research Fellowship, which offers the largest scope of support available from the EAN. This is truly an unmissable opportunity, not only to obtain financial support for training and research in neuroscience, but also to travel and gain experience at an academic neurological department elsewhere in Europe. There is still time to apply for this Fellowship until 31 August, so if you would like to carry out a research project abroad that will provide experience or training beyond what you could expect to receive at home, I strongly urge you to investigate this option.
The 2022 EAN Clinical Fellowship is also still open for applications until 31 October. This is another potentially career-defining opportunity, offering neurologists who are in training, or recently qualified, valuable experience observing clinical practice at a department with recognised expertise in a particular field. Again, this is not only an invaluable chance to learn from highly experienced colleagues in a top-class environment, but also to travel abroad and acquire all manner of new professional and social experiences.
Despite the challenges of the last 18 months or so, EAN has continued to offer top-class educational opportunities by converting to virtual events wherever we can. We have recently managed to follow through with a Regional Teaching Course in Moscow, Russia, three EAN-Days (in Kazakhstan, Armenia and Greece) and the EAN Spring School by offering them online. Many of the webcasts from these events are already available in the Webcasts section of the EAN website – the rest will be available soon.
On this note, I am pleased to say that (at the time of writing) our Autumn School is planned to take place as a face-to-face event in Loutraki, Greece on 7-11 October. The EAN head office is of course closely monitoring the health situation and will be sure to inform participants of any changes, based on all the available advice. You can get a first taste by looking at the Autumn School Prequel Webcasts which cover part of the Muscle Weakness day of the upcoming school.
Finally, in terms of administration, there is one big step to report: the EAN E-learning Subcommittee was formally established last month, with four associate editors and representatives from other EAN committees, all supporting the Editor-in-Chief, Barbara Tettenborn. They are already diving deep into their work to prepare the future e-learning programme. I very much look forward to sharing their progress with you at a later date.
Until then, I would like to wish you all a very pleasant summer. If you find yourself with some holiday time to spare, don’t forget you can still check out all the great education sessions from the EAN Virtual Congress!
Best wishes and stay healthy,
Riccardo Soffietti
EAN Education Committee Chair
