NSF Awards: 1549875
As a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), Santa Rosa Junior College (SRJC) sought to improve our students’ science education and transition to their four year transfer institution through a program of Course based Undergraduate Experiences (CUREs). Over a 3 year period, we provided training, release time, student support and supply money for 12 faculty to develop and implement these research projects in courses that included: 3 biology courses (biology majors, non-majors and pre-nursing students), chemistry (introductory and organic chemistry), a physics course (calculus based), math courses (linear algebra and statistics), environmental science, soil science, computer science and economics.
There are projects that are collaborating with outside institution, some are standalone projects and others interdisciplinary. Data collected on student scientific identity, scientific self-efficacy and scientific values alignment show a significant influence of the CURE format. Since our student body has such a high percentage of Hispanic students and first generation college students, this is an important benefit to assisting these groups with developing their scientific careers. Students are using these experiences in successfully applying for competitive summer research internships.
Abigail Zoger
Instructor
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).
Stephen Alkins
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer
The hands-on experience is crucial for students to develop skills. Have you had to address any challenges with adequate facilities on SRJC? Is the college familiar with virtual lab technologies that may also enhance the training aspect of working with different instruments?
Ethan Wilde
Full-time Faculty / Program Coordinator
Stephen,
Thanks for spotlighting virtual labs as an avenue for student training. In my field of CS/CIS, much of the work takes place in the virtual realm. That's where user-centered design practices, design thinking, and user testing re-connect student researchers to the problem-solving modality of measurable outcomes – in the real world. We have been blessed this year, facility-wise, with a new VR and computing lab equipped with everything we could ask for technology-wise.
Laleh Cote
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.
Ethan Wilde
Full-time Faculty / Program Coordinator
Laleh,
For my students in CS/CIS, many were surprised to find out about the field of Computer-Human Interaction and user-centered design research. Coders often live in their own bubbles, while user-centered design demands they become solution-oriented outside their digital boxes.
Stephen Alkins
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer
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.
Ethan Wilde
Full-time Faculty / Program Coordinator
Stephen,
Thank you for sharing your ideas of symposia and partnerships. Both are areas I hope we can grow into here at SRJC. This is my first semester participating in the CURE project here. I expect some of my colleagues have more to say about student participation in regional and local symposia.
Abigail Zoger
Instructor
Stephen
Regarding research symposia, our MESA program does a poster session at the end of each year and some of our CUREs are presenting at that event.
Do you have suggestions of undergraduate research symposia that take place in Northern California?
Stephen Alkins
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer
Hi Abigail,
I do not know of research conferences in that area, but since you have contacts at UC Berkeley and can reach out to other institutes like Stanford, you can create a network of communication so that your students have more diverse opportunities.
Ethan Wilde
Full-time Faculty / Program Coordinator
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?"
Robin Cotter
Abigail Zoger
Instructor
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.
Robin Cotter
Laleh Cote
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/
Robin Cotter
Patricia Marsteller
Assoc Dean and Professor of Practice
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/
Abigail Zoger
Instructor
JoVE looks very interesting. I did not know about them. Thanks!
Rebecca Roberts
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/
Ethan Wilde
Full-time Faculty / Program Coordinator
Rebecca,
Thank you for sharing your video. The work of you and your colleague looks like a very compelling CURE. The field of biology seems to be a hotbed of CURE activities. I wonder if anyone has a sense of why that is? I am curious since my field is CS, where I've not seen as much activity in the CURE space.
Abigail Zoger
Instructor
I went and checked out your video. It's great to connect with people who are doing CUREs.
Alex Rudolph
Professor
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?
Abigail Zoger
Instructor
Alex,
we have been collecting data on student: self efficacy, scientific values alignment, scientific identity,intellectual ownership, scientific practices, sense of community, science research intentions. We do this at the beginning and end of the semester as well as in CURE vs. non-CURE courses. We'll have our final data to analyze this summer. The first two years of data show a change in self efficacy and values alignment that is more pronounced in women than men.
Your second point about sustainability is an interesting one. There are several points to consider: the sustainability of the CURE in an individual course and the sustainability of CURE program growth at the college in general. Each faculty member was encouraged to create a CURE project that could be sustained beyond the infusion of release time and supply budget from the grant. In other words, my Arabiodpsis project can't take more money or time than I devoted to other physiology experiments in the past ( or not much more!). As for the college wide effort, we would like to do some fundraising so that there was a regular budget for a few faculty to develop CUREs each year.
Alexander Rudolph
Ethan Wilde
Full-time Faculty / Program Coordinator
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.
Alexander Rudolph
Jessica Bell
Great program! Have you shared your approach to setting up a CURE in organic chemistry through CourseSource or CUREnet?
Further posting is closed as the showcase has ended.