Have you ever wondered how an ordinary, person on the street, like a community college student becomes a research scientist?

Research experience begets research experience, so how to get on the merry-go-round?  Watch our video to see how this story begins!

Our goal is to make research accessible to all undergraduates through Course Based Undergraduate Experiences (CUREs).

• Have you considered this option for yourself or your institution?
• If you do these types of CUREs or projects, what are some of the interesting outcomes that you have encountered in your program?
• For example, the quality of the student scientific papers improved with my CURE. I think it is because they have to read more scientific literature.

Yes, we have some CUREs at UC Berkeley, and taking steps to increase this number. I hope you'll share some of the lessons learned from this project with us during the video showcase.

Nice program!

With the CUREs do you have any research symposia at SRJC to get students used to presenting their work? This may be a way to invite faculty and students from other intsitutions to present their work and see that of your students.  Also, I know developing partnerships with neighboring universities can be difficult, but have you been working on developing a particular pipeline with any specific universities?  It may help to stabilize a program and a set of mentors.

My CURE work at SRJC is focused on user experience research in the field of Computer-Human Interaction (CHI). Students in the Game Development program worked in teams this semester to develop transformative games to foster literacy in young people. Our research activities included a collaborative play testing arrangement with the Sonoma County CoderDojo program, so that JC students got the chance to conduct user research first-hand with kids ages 9-13. One of the areas of exploration students discovered during play testing was input modalities. The investigation hinged on the question "Were learning outcomes affected differently by direct touch interaction vs. keyboard control of the game experience?"

Laleh, 

I'd love to hear about some of the CUREs at UCB.  A fair number of our students transfer there and it would be good for them to know that those opportunities exist.  

As for lessons learned; there are specific lessons from my individual CURE and those from trying to create a program at a community college. I'll speak to those

1. There is an interest in doing this among community college faculty- including those in social sciences. 

2. There are significant barriers- the largest being time commitments.  Because our teaching load is fairly high as well as departmental and college service, offering faculty release time in order to create their CURE was crucial.  I myself had developed a CURE  before the grant, but the quality of the work improved after I had some time to invest in the project. 

3.There is a saturation point: not all the faculty will want to do this. 

I will give you two examples:

In summer, there is a class called “Discovery Research in Microbiology,” taught by Kathleen Ryan (Plant & Microbial Biology department) at UC Berkeley. The course number is PMB 104L. The main goal of this course is to expose students to research in microbiology, and students with no prior research experience are welcome - I think this last point is very important when we’re thinking about equity and access issues in higher education.

You can read more about her research here: https://kathleenryanlab.berkeley.edu/

There is another course taught by Matt Traxler (also in Plant & Microbial Biology), and this course number is PMB/MCB C112L, but it is offered in the fall semester. It is called “General Microbiology Lab,” but instead of just doing the cookbook-style lab exercises, students design and carry out their own experiments throughout the semester. A main goal is for students to really learn about and practice experimental design, in addition to “the basics” of microbiology lab work.

You can read more about his research here: https://traxlerlab.berkeley.edu/

Great project! I really like the idea of CUREs and then follow up research opportunities!

For teaching techniques do you have access to Journal of Visualized Experimentation and their education sets of videos?  I think they are very helpful for teaching techniques and showing how science is done as practice before lab.

Has  anyone used Labster virtual labs for introducing the science before lab?

https://www.labster.com/simulations/

Wonderful project. I invite you to check out our video on another CURE (On Becoming Scientists: https://stemforall2019.videohall.com/presentations/1420) that could be easily incorporated at any community college as it was designed to be flexible and independent of an individual faculty members research expertise. All the documents (protocols, teacher tips, assessments (w/ answers)) are available for free at https://basilbiochem.github.io/basil/

 I went and checked out your video. It's great to connect with people who are doing CUREs.

This is a wonderful program! I completely endorse the importance of undergraduate research in promoting student success, even for students who don't eventually pursue research careers. I want to call your attention to the fact that Santa Rosa Junior College also participates in CAMPARE a statewide program I run to promote undergraduate research experiences in physics, astronomy, and related fields for students at over 50 CSUs and community colleges. Lynda Williams of your physics department is the CAMPARE liaison on your campus.

Though the impact is possibly greatest at community colleges, which traditionally don't have resources to provide research experiences outside of the classroom, I wonder if the CUREs approach could also work at 4-year public universities like mine (Cal Poly Pomona) where too few of our students get these kind of experiences.

My main questions revolve around impact, sustainability, and dissemination. I would like to hear more about how you measure impact for your project. You provide some anecdotal evidence of success, but do you have any way of showing how your program improves student outcomes, both inside and outside the classroom, more systematically? Regarding sustainability, do you have any support from your institution or outside funding to continue this project after the grant runs out? Finally, how do you plan to disseminate this important work to other community colleges (or 4-year universities) that would like to learn from your work?

Alex,

Great questions. I will jump in on the last one. Our CURE program caught the attention of faculty at the Maricopa Community College District in Arizona. In response to their inquiry, we met with their cohort in a live online conference to share our projects and field questions from their group, who were just starting to embark on the development of a CURE program at their school.

Great program!  Have you shared your approach to setting up a CURE in organic chemistry through CourseSource or CUREnet?