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1. Increasing Undergraduate Retention in Appalachia through a Mentored Undergraduate Research Experience

   https://doi.org/10.18833/spur/7/2/1  

   Pacheco, Cinthia; Hessl, Amy; Campbell, John; Zalman, Paige; Ferguson, Carinna (January 2023, Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research)

   This article describes the Research Apprenticeship Program (RAP), a mentored undergraduate research experience implemented in 2017 at a public land-grant institution located in the Appalachian region. The article focuses on RAP’s approach to recruiting, retaining, and supporting students in faculty-mentored research and creative inquiry. To assess the impact of RAP on undergraduate retention, institutional data were collected to identify RAP participants from the years 2017 to 2022 (n = 868) to compare next-year retention rates with institutional averages across similar demographic groups. The results showed that retention rates for RAP participants were significantly higher than institutional averages, and disaggregated data also showed higher retention rates for participants from historically marginalized populations. These This article describes the Research Apprenticeship Program (RAP), a mentored undergraduate research experience implemented in 2017 at a public land-grant institution located in the Appalachian region. The article focuses on RAP’s approach to recruiting, retaining, and supporting students in faculty-mentored research and creative inquiry. To assess the impact of RAP on undergraduate retention, institutional data were collected to identify RAP participants from the years 2017 to 2022 (n = 868) to compare next-year retention rates with institutional averages across similar demographic groups. The results showed that retention rates for RAP participants were significantly higher than institutional averages, and disaggregated data also showed higher retention rates for participants from historically marginalized populations. These results provide evidence of the program’s contribution to the educational development of the Appalachian region. 

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2. Undergraduate Computer Science Curricula

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3624729  

   Simha, Rahul; Kumar, Amruth N.; Raj, Rajendra K. (February 2024, Communications of the ACM)

   There can be many conflicting goals for the design of a computer science curriculum including: immediate employability in industry, preparation for long-term success in an ever-changing discipline and preparation for graduate (that is, post-graduate) study. Emphasis on immediate employability may lead to prioritizing current tools and techniques at the expense of foundational and theoretical skills as well as broader liberal-arts education that are crucial to long-term career success and for graduate study. The implications of these conflicting goals include allocation of finite resources (time, courses in the curriculum), unwillingness of students to invest in the mathematics that they see as irrelevant to their immediate career goals, and reluctance of faculty to have their courses driven by a continually evolving marketplace of tools and APIs. A balanced curriculum benefits all stakeholders: students, employers, and faculty. Would a data-driven approach help faculty design curricula that effectively balance these multiple goals? For example, if we ask graduates of computer science programs to reflect on the impact of their undergraduate education, explicitly focusing on short and long-term impact, will there be enough meaningful data to significantly inform curricular design? A recent survey of industry professionals undertaken by the ACM/IEEE-CS/AAAI 2023 Computer Science Curricular Task Force (CS2023) points the way. This column presents one aspect of that survey—a focus on comparing short-term versus long-term views—and calls for similar surveys of industry professionals to be conducted on an ongoing basis to refine our understanding of the role played by various elements of undergraduate computer science curricula in the success of graduates. 

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3. Faculty and Undergraduate Students’ Challenges When Connecting Advanced Undergraduate Mathematics to School Mathematics

   Álvarez, James A.; Burroughs, Elizabeth (January 2019, Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Conference on Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education)

   When implementing lessons connecting advanced undergraduate mathematics to school mathematics, challenges arise for faculty and for the undergraduate students. The Mathematical Education of Teachers as an Application of Undergraduate Mathematics (META Math) project has created, piloted, and field-tested lessons for undergraduate mathematics and statistics courses typically part of a mathematics major that leads to secondary mathematics teacher certification. Lessons in calculus, discrete mathematics, algebra, and statistics explicitly link topics in college mathematics with high school mathematics topics prospective teachers will eventually teach. The goal of this poster presentation is to discuss our preliminary observations of the challenges faced by faculty and undergraduate students when implementing or using these lessons. We also wish to gather feedback and suggestions on the study design and potential directions for further research. 

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4. Course Based Undergraduate Research Demystifies and Democratizes inquiry-based research for undergraduate STEM students.

   Hoffbuhr, K; Mast, G; Brady, B; Blume, G; Elliser, C; Palmer, C (June 2023, Transforming Institution Conference)

   Undergraduate research experiences (UREs) have been shown to improve both persistence and graduation rates for women and students of color (Alquicira et al. 2022). Although these effects are observed broadly across higher education, they are especially pronounced in the context of the STEM fields (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2017). Although community colleges disproportionately enroll students who can most benefit from UREs, structural barriers make UREs rare at community colleges (Hewlett 2018). This change project, based at a mid-sized community college in Washington State, is part of the state’s Consortium for Undergraduate Research and Equity (CURE) and aspires to address the paucity of community college research opportunities in STEM through the design and implementation of a year-long research project for students enrolled in the primary course sequence for biology majors (approximately 50-100 annually). The project’s underlying theory of change is twofold. First, two local community partners and four science faculty use backward design to create a research project that embeds laboratory skills and learning outcomes in a year-long URE. Second, participating faculty replace the entire lab curriculum in the college’s three-course biology sequence with this applied year-long research project. Incorporating applied research into the college’s biology curriculum demystifies and democratizes inquiry-based research for first-generation, underrepresented, and/or academically underprepared students, who also may not have the financial privilege to participate in an unpaid internship that affords them such an experience. Preliminary findings from this change initiative will focus on project goals related to creating equitable access across a range of outcomes including demographic participation rates, the development of professional STEM research skills, and the extent to which UREs enhance a community college student’s sense of belonging among a larger scientific community. 

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5. Nanomaterials Research at a Primarily Undergraduate Institution: Transforming Nanorods, Undergraduate Research Communities, and Infrastructure

   https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnanoscienceau.4c00005  

   Plass, Katherine_E; Krebs, J_Kenneth; Morford, Jennifer_L; Schaak, Raymond_E; Stapleton, Joshua_J; van_Duin, Adri_C_T (April 2024, ACS Nanoscience Au)