Increasing Diversity and Opportunity in Science by Optimizing Undergraduate Research through CUREs
The overall goal of OUR CUREs is to support development and implementation of Four types of Collaborative CUREs that will be the “treatment” courses in OUR pedagogical research. These CUREs may involve Malate Dehydrogenase or can be on any system but will involve the eight CURE elements listed on the OUR CUREs Website and use three community developed rubrics as well as several provided assessment tools to explore student and faculty outcomes.
Promoting & Supporting Vertically Integrated CUREs
Promoting & Supporting Horizontally Integrated CUREs
Promoting & Supporting Instrument & Technique Integrated CUREs
Promoting & Supporting Research Collaborative CUREs
AIM:
Create an infrastructure for a sustainable (beyond the life of the current project) national network of faculty implementing CUREs in courses from First Year to Capstone in chemistry, biology and at the interface between the disciplines. The CUREs, at whatever level will share the seven common elements of a CURE: i) Relevance, ii) Scientific Background, iii) Hypothesis Development, iv) Proposal, v)Experiments, Teamwork, Collaboration, Reproducibility, vi) Data Analysis & Drawing Evidence Based Conclusion and vii) Presentation. Creating such a network will 1) enhance participation of a large, diverse population of students in authentic research activities, and with a focus on both STEM majors and Non-STEM majors improve both the pipeline into STEM related careers and general STEM literacy, and 2) create a resource to facilitate pedagogical research into effective components of CUREs as well as barriers to faculty implementation of CUREs in their classes.
We will explore pedagogical questions associated with both impact of CUREs on student outcomes and Faculty development to support CURE implementation.
The OUR network will build upon and expand the highly successful MCC network but will no longer focus only on Malate Dehydrogenase related CUREs and encompass a diverse array of topics in chemistry, biology and the interface between the two disciplines including environmental chemistry, materials science, medicinal chemistry, plant physiology, cell biology, molecular biology, biochemistry, biophysics and a variety of biotechnology related topics.
The OUR network will be organized around 6 geographically proximal regions, the pacific coast and bordering states, the upper Midwest (Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin), MidCentral (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, W Virginia), the northeast coast and bordering states, Southeast (Georgia and surrounding states}, and SouthCentral (Texas and surrounding states) giving a diverse range of institutions (Community College, PUI, Comprehensive and R1 with a significant number of Minority Serving Institutions. The program will initially involve approximately 50 institutions evenly distributed between these categories, with approximately 75 faculty serving upwards of 10,000 students per year with plans to expand by the end of the grant period to 100 institutions, 150 faculty and 20,000 students per year.
All CUREs in OUR will contain the same 7 common elements of a CURE discussed above, and will be conducted in both full semester vs modular (6 week) versions, and as in MCC1.0 will involve stand alone vs Collaborative aspects.
The network will provide opportunities for collaborative CURE Classroom research activities between institutions, for regional and national student symposia (using the QUBEs platform), faculty development workshops on inclusive teaching, initiating and sustaining a CURE, on how to incorporate the main aspects of a CURE, and on a variety of experimental approaches easily incorporated into CUREs without expensive facilities.