NSF Awards: 1533545
Broadening participation in STEM requires that STEM practitioners (researchers and educators) create a welcoming and inclusive environment where underrepresented students can thrive. Students need to have access to opportunities for professional growth early, as one opportunity often leads to the next, and building this cultural capital is critical to success in STEM careers and graduate programs. As an open-access Historically Black College and University with more than 80% underrepresented and Pell-eligible students, Harris-Stowe State University is an ideal place to investigate how to support the successes of students that will lead to broadening participation in STEM. We are exploring an innovative practice to integrate biology faculty and class-based research space, bringing first-year undergraduates into the fold as well as the field. Through an NSF-funded Targeted-Infusion Project, students in our freshman introductory biology laboratory class participate in a Classroom Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) based in the instructor’s own research interests. Students create posters of their research projects and share them internally in an end-of –term poster session developing communication skills necessary for success in STEM careers. Seven students have also presented research conducted as part of this freshman course in professional-level regional and national meetings providing crucial opportunities to network, exposure to potential career paths, and advancing their career development.
Scott Horrell
We are happy to share our video which highlights some students’ experiences related to our classroom undergraduate research experience that we run in our introductory biology lab courses at Harris-Stowe State University. We would also be happy to discuss curriculum and other aspects of course design.
Jessica DeSpain
We are working on plans for a four-year research experience at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville that crosses disciplines, we'd love to talk to visit with you about your curriculum!
Scott Horrell
Jessica, we would really love to hear about what you plan to do sophomore year and beyond. We have recently started brainstorming on this topic. Do you do classroom research experiences or engage your students in some other way? Maybe I can stop by the campus one day to discuss things and see your lab setup.
Jana Marcette, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Biology
We should talk! Our discussions have centered around statistics and data analysis skills. Students in our program are required to take an R programming lab with their introductory stats class, and another computer programming language. They use these skills in their upper-division biostatistics course, and we are discussing ways to incorporate them throughout the curriculum.
Ginger Fisher
I love what you are doing! We have implemented a CURE for all of our freshman in our introductory course that you might be interested in. You can check out the video here http://stemforall2018.videohall.com/presentatio...
Diane Smoot, Ph.D.
Danielle Watt
Director of Education, Outreach, & Diversity
Thanks for sharing your impactful project! I see you are brainstorming to expand to second year + but what are your plans to expand to other STEM subjects?
There was a 10% increase in course retention, have you seen any impact on retention in the major?
Scott Horrell
Danielle,
Thank you for your comment - we have worked diligently to develop this course and have been very pleased with the impact we have had on our students.
Harris-Stowe has only recently began offering STEM degrees but we are expanding rapidly. Our next target is bolstering our chemistry labs to provide high quality experiences as well. Chemistry is a challenging subject for many students, but if we could develop a course that engaged the students like we do in our biology labs I think we could find real success.
We have not investigated retention in the major just yet, but we certainly should. It will be interesting to see if there is an effect on students applying and being accepted to graduate school too. We predict this type of experience should begin their path to developing competitive resumes and applications early and give them a crucial advantage in a highly competitive process.
Danielle Watt
Whitney Erby
Doctoral Student
Thanks for presenting your video! It is clear from research and other videos that many students have difficulties early on in their academic STEM careers. Having this CURE project during freshmen year seems particularly helpful. After students complete this course, what additional support is available to them? What are some major challenges the program has faced?
Scott Horrell
Whitney,
Thank you for your comment. We are currently working on a sophomore level course that will extend this experience for our biology majors and get them some proficiency with various tools of the trade and techniques. But the main way we support our students in their later years is by helping pursue internships and other opportunities. We have connections to other institutions in the area (Washington University, Saint Louis University, St. Louis Botanical Garden, St. Louis Zoo, and others) that help us get our students into research positions and further develop their career. We also have professional and peer tutors that will help students with their coursework. Additionally, we have a very successful program called the Minority Science and Engineering Improvement Program (MSEIP) that students can join after their freshman year. Our MSEIP students have been extremely successful pursuing opportunities.
Regarding challenges, it has been somewhat difficult to develop a curriculum that accounts for the varying levels of preparation among our students. As an open-access school we have a wide range in this regard. We have and will continue to improve, but that is the biggest problem I have observed.
Danielle Watt
Jana Marcette, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Biology
I too have seen students have difficulties transitioning into college STEM majors. Its a lot to juggle, and when you are at an open-access university like ours, students are often juggling academics, work and responsibilities to their families and communities. One of the benefits I have really seen with our Bio-BOOST CURE is in the ownership aspect of designing your own project. Students seem to take pride in their work, and this really shows during our poster-sessions. Having the poster-sessions also adds a universal design for learning element to the course, as that this is a way independent of our written and practical exams/quizzes to demonstrate knowledge.
After students complete the course, they still have access to their TAs, who hold office hours each week in both Fall and Spring term.
For me one of the biggest challenges has been in getting the curriculum to work for a variety of instructors including adjunct instructors. The course is cell-molecular based, and the basic curriculum was designed by a rice (O. sativa) geneticist and a worm (C. elegans) neurobiologist. We have added additional model organisms to the curriculum including fruit flies (D. melanogaster) and Tetrahymena (T. thermophila). This is a multi-section course every semester, and it has taken some tweaking to get it to work as a consistent, coherent course for everyone....and this changes each year as our adjunct pool changes.
Jay Labov
Thank you very much for posting this video. Having the focus on students and allowing them to describe your efforts from their perspectives is very effective. Some of the resources that I describe below about undergraduate research experiences is taken verbatim from my comments on another video for which I'm serving as a facilitator (http://stemforall2018.videohall.com/presentations/1307). The comments below those are new here and provide links to a report that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine published in 2016 and a study that is being completed now, for which a report should be available later this year, which might be helpful to people who view this video.
Comments from the other video:
...you may be interested to read two recent reports about undergraduate research experiences that have been published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (all publications of the National Academies are available for download without cost through the links provided below):
The first was published in 2015 and provides a summary of a national convocation about CUREs: Integrating Discovery-Based Research into the Undergraduate Curriculum. The committee and staff who organized this convocation also published a summary about it in CBE/Life Sciences Education and is available at http://www.lifescied.org/content/15/2/fe2.full.pdf+html.
A more extensive report that examined the research base for the efficacy of undergraduate research experiences (both CUREs and apprentice-based models) was published in 2017 and was funded by the National Science Foundation Undergraduate Research Experiences for STEM Students: Successes, Challenges, and Opportunities.
There is also a community-based website, CURENet, that provides helpful information and discussion forums about course-based undergraduate research experiences. These are primarily in biology but the ideas and more general principles can be adapted to a variety of disciplines.
Additional information related to this video:
In 2016 the National Academies published a report, Barriers and Opportunities for 2-Year and 4-Year STEM Degrees, that provides information that could be useful when thinking about undergraduate education more broadly. The aforementioned study that is currently underway focuses on “Closing the Equity Gap: Securing Our STEM Education and Workforce Readiness Infrastructure in the Nation's Minority-Serving Institutions.”
Jana Marcette, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Biology
Thanks, these are indeed impressive resources! Dr. Horrell and I also participated in a REILbiology ( http://rcn.ableweb.org/) workshop on creating CUREs for introductory courses.
Kevin Floyd
Hi Scott,
I'm interested in a topic that wasn't really discussed in the video, the interaction of upper division students in this intro lab. How are those students involved in this lab, and what benefits have you seen? We have had some undergraduate TAs in the copepod CURE at UTEP, but mostly in an informal role so far.
The conference presentations look like a great outcome from this lab as well, nice job!
Kevin
Jana Marcette, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Biology
I apologize if this is a double post, I don't see the one I just wrote.....
We have students involved in two different ways. Each lab class has an upper-division TA, who also hold their own office hours each week, in a room adjacent to our faculty office space. Because these classes occur in our only faculty research space on campus, we also have upper-division research students who work in this space during our classes, but who are not formally part of the class. When I teach, I will often take a moment to ask these students to talk about what they are doing right now, and how it relates to their larger research goals.
I have seen two major benefits, one is that the intro students get to know, or at least recognize the upper-division students. Students often work with the TAs in their office hours. I cannot attribute this entirely to our upperdivision students, but we have seen a HUGE increase in freshman asking to do research projects.
Kevin Floyd
Interesting, thanks for the response. It seems that the freshman student's science identity improves after this experience getting to interact (or at least observe) the upper-division students conducting research. That would be tough for us to emulate in our lab situation here at UTEP, but sounds like a great mentoring opportunity!
Jana Marcette, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Biology
Hello, we have upper-division students in two different roles. Each lab section has an upper-division student TA who assists with lab, and who holds weekly office hours outside of class in an area that is contiguous with our faculty offices. The second role, is a little bit novel: the lab space used for the course is our only faculty lab space on campus, so upper-division students (who are not TAs) are also using the space at the same time as our freshman students. When I am teaching in this space, I will often take a moment and ask the student-researchers to say a few words about what they are doing today in lab, and about a larger goal of their project. I cannot completely attribute this to our TAs and Research Students, but we have seen a HUGE spike in freshman students asking to do research with faculty.
Diane Smoot, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Computer Education
Danielle, as a computer education faculty member, I am looking at this model for implementation ideas in computer programming classes.
Further posting is closed as the showcase has ended.