Alaska Undergraduate Research Experience: Partnering for Alaska Students by Growing Recruitment and Retention through Undergraduate Research

University Of Alaska Anchorage Campus, Anchorage AK

Investigators

Abstract

Undergraduate research experiences focused on regional issues are an effective way to increase retention of underrepresented students in STEM fields nationally. Alaska offers a rich diversity of field- and lab-based research experiences, with much of this work being led by institutions outside of the academic setting. However, it has proven to be challenging to connect university students interested in pursuing careers in STEM fields in Alaska with those opportunities. The main goal of the Alaska Undergraduate Research Experience is to connect Alaskan students to local research opportunities in biological sciences to increase retention and better prepare students to enter research endemic to Alaska. This project will bring the Alaskan research community together to develop community partnerships with local research projects (e.g. local tribal councils, non-profits, state and federal agencies across Alaska) and create pathways for future undergraduate research opportunities. To sustain the network in its infancy, collaborators will participate in training workshops that strengthen skills in building and sustaining community, mentoring, and cross-cultural relationships. A website will be developed to connect undergraduates to research opportunities and to provide an information hub to tie communities in remote locations to research that is accessible to their students. Alaska’s diversity, both in research, in its people, provide a unique opportunity to connect people in national biological research industries to the regional communities that they are exploring. This project will identify community partnerships with local research projects, provide workshops on Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CURE) development and place-based education for collaborators, develop a network informational hub within the Science Education Resource Center (SERC) website, and evaluate the network. The University of Alaska - Anchorage and Alaska Pacific University serve non-traditional student populations and enroll a diverse student body, including a large percentage of Alaska Native students. Students from these institutions will be connected to the network collaborators to engage in directed biological research for course credit. To ensure that the network is sustainable, the SERC website will serve as a permanent platform to connect local research projects with interested students. The outcomes of this initial network-building project will guide future expansions of the regional network and will inform retention efforts of underrepresented undergraduates in the biological sciences nationally. This project is being jointly funded by the Directorate for Biological Sciences, Division of Biological Infrastructure, and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources, Division of Undergraduate Education as part of their efforts to address the challenges posed in "Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action" (http://visionandchange/finalreport) with additional support provided by the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.