Course-Based Undergraduate Research for All: Preparing the Future STEM Workforce

Arizona State University, Scottsdale AZ

Investigators

Abstract

Opportunities to conduct authentic research improve students' understanding of science and promote their self-identification as scientists. Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) allow many more students to be exposed to authentic research than the traditional mentor-mentee, apprenticeship-style approach to undergraduate research. The investigators will develop CUREs in which all STEM majors in the School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences at the West campus of Arizona State University (ASU) will enroll. The courses will focus on research questions, and in them the students will become scientists -- generating hypotheses, developing protocols, performing experiments, generating data, and analyzing the results. By designing interdisciplinary CURE modules, testing them at ASU West, and disseminating them widely, the project will enhance an evidence-based pedagogical approach that will improve the education of the future STEM workforce. The CUREs to be developed will focus on topics in food science, remediation, cell biology, and population dynamics. Tentative module titles include "Native Bees of Arizona: Bee Species Diversity and Relative Abundance," "Phytotoxicity and Phytoremediation of Mine Site Soils," and "Analysis of Ethanol Production and Flocculation in Brewer's Yeast." All of the modules will be geared toward data generation, analysis, and publication and will advance the understanding of their research topics. The investigators will develop pedagogical methodology that integrates all aspects of the scientific method -- namely, hypothesis generation, experimental execution, and data analysis -- and will analyze the ability of the CUREs to increase students' interest, abilities, and retention in science. The methodology will incorporate a "common course outline," which will standardize the teaching of common components of scientific inquiry and will be flexible enough to be applied to diverse research topics. To encourage the use of CUREs by faculty at other institutions, the investigators will sponsor workshops on the nature of CUREs in general, their particular CURE model and modules, and assessment techniques.