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1. Enlisting historically excluded undergraduates in the effort to extend knowledge of West Antarctica’s bedrock, through course-based undergraduate research experiences (cures) and Art-Science initiatives

   Siddoway, Christine ; Thomson, Stuart ; Taylor, Jennifer ; Pepper, Marty ; Furlong, Heather ; Ruggiero, Joe ; & Reed, Brandon ( September 2022 , 29th West Antarctic Ice Sheet workshop)

   An enormous reserve of information about the subglacial bedrock, tectonic and topographic evolution of Marie Byrd Land (MBL) exists within glaciomarine sediments of the Amundsen Sea shelf, slope and deep sea, and MBL marine shelf. Investigators of the NSF ICI-Hot and NSF Linchpin projects partnered with Arizona Laserchron Center to provide course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) for from groups who do not ordinarily find access points to Antarctic science. Our courses enlist BIPOC and gender-expansive undergraduates in studies of ice-rafted debris (IRD) and bedrock samples, in order to impart skills, train in the use of research instrumentation, help students to develop confidence in their scientific abilities, and collaboratively address WAIS research questions at an early academic stage. CUREs afford benefits to graduate researchers and postdoctoral scientists, also, who join in as instructional faculty: CUREs allow GRs and PDs to engage in teaching that closely ties to their active research, yet provides practical experience to strengthen the academic portfolio (Cascella & Jez, 2018). Team members also develop art-science initiatives that engage students and community members who may not ordinarily engage with science, forging connections that make science relatable. Re-casting science topics through art centers personal connections and humanizes science, to promote understanding that goes beyond the purely analytical. Academic research shows that diverse undergraduates gain markedly from the convergence of art and science, and from involvement in collaborative research conducted within a CURE cohort, rather than as an individualized experience (e.g. Shanahan et al. 2022). The CUREs are offered as regular courses for credit, making access equitable via course enrollment. The course designation carries a legitimacy that is sought by students who balance academics with part-time employment. Course information is disseminated via STEM Bridge programs and/or an academic advising hub that reaches students from groups that are insufficiently represented within STEM and cryosphere science. CURE investigation of Amundsen Sea and WAIS problems is worthy objective because: 1) A variety of sample preparation, geochemical methods, and scientific best-practices can be imparted, while educating students about Antarctica’s geological configuration and role in the Earth climate system. 2) Individual projects that are narrowly defined can readily scaffold into collaborative science at the time of data synthesis and interpretation. 3) There is a high likelihood of scientific discovery that contributes to grant objectives. 4) Enrolled students will experience ambiguity and instrumentation setbacks alongside their faculty and instructors, and will likely have an opportunity to withstand/overcome challenges in a manner that trains students in complex problem solving and imparts resilience (St John et al., 2019). Based on our experiences, we consider CUREs as a means to create more inclusive and equitable spaces for learning to do research, and a basis for a broadening future WAIS community. Our groups have yet to assess student learning gains and STEM entry in a robust way, but we can report that two presenters at WAIS 2022 came from our 2021 CURE, and four polar science graduate researchers gained experience via CURE teaching. Data obtained by CURE students is contributing to our NSF projects’ aims to obtain isotope, age, and petrogenetic criteria with bearing on the subglacial bedrock geology, tectonic and landscape evolution, and ice sheet history of MBL. Cited and recommended works: Cascella & Jez, 2018, doi: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.7b00705 Gentile et al., 2017, doi: 10.17226/24622 Shanahan et al. 2022, https://www.cur.org/assets/1/23/01-01_TOC_SPUR_Winter21.pdf Shortlidge & Brownell, 2016, doi: 10.1128/jmbe.v17i3.1103 St. John et al. 2019, EOS, doi: 10.1029/2019EO127285. 

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2. Effectiveness of Course-Based Undergraduate Research Within the General Chemistry Classroom and Their Potential Role in the Cultivation of Modern Polymaths

   https://doi.org/10.5923/j.jlce.20210901.01  

   Gunn, P ; Ashcroft, J ( March 2021 , Journal of laboratory chemical education)

   Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences or CUREs promote student-centered learning through infusion of research principles within an undergraduate course. This is an ideal pedagogy for use in General Chemistry. CUREs provide access to research experience to a broader audience, which increases engagement and success. A CURE model was implemented in a second semester General Chemistry course at Pasadena City College, a Hispanic serving institution (HSI) community college. Student success rate in the CURE chemistry classroom increased by over 20% and students’ completion rates increased over 5%. In addition, success, and completion rates of Hispanic students in the class showed no achievement gap and an over 10% higher completion rate compared to students that took the non-CURE chemistry course. CUREs also had the added benefit of providing more populous groups of undergraduates with opportunities to get a taste of real-world working scenarios that would normally be reserved for upper-level graduate students. Adopting CUREs as an integral part of an institutions’ learning strategies promotes student engagement that will bridge the gaps in traditional learning, but also facilitate development of the essential soft skills required in the collaborative environment that is commonplace in working professional settings. The potential role and relationship of CUREs implementation regarding the revival and cultivation of polymathy among future students as well as its implications on the future of academic instruction based on connections made from historical and interdisciplinary observations are also explores. 

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3. GIFTS: Making Research Experiences Meaningful through Critical Self-Reflection

   DeCrescenzo, Peter ; Jangha, S. ( June 2023 , American Society of Engineering Education)

   In this Great Ideas for Teaching Students (GIFTS) paper, we offer learning outcomes that we are beginning to recognize from our eight-week research experience for undergraduates (REU). There are four characteristics that have been found to be essential to success in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields: a strong sense of STEM identity, scientific self-efficacy, a sense of belonging, and a psychological sense of community. This is especially true for first-year and transfer students pursuing STEM undergraduate degrees. A variety of studies have been published that go into detail about why these characteristics in particular have such a significant effect on student performance and retention. This paper will present Critical Self-Reflection as a practical way to integrate development of these characteristics into student research experiences to foster experiential learning that goes beyond increasing technical skills. STEM students are not often trained to critically self-reflect on their experiences in classroom and research settings. An inability for undergraduates to reflect intentionally on their experiences creates greater risk for attrition from STEM disciplines. Curated reflective experiences in collaborative learning settings can offer professional development opportunities to enhance students’ social and technical communication skills. There are four phases within the scaffolded Critical Self-Reflection framework: Learning to Reflect, Reflection for Action, Reflection in Action, and Reflection on Action. When applying the evidence-based practice, STEM undergraduate researchers describe their perceptions via three activities: creating a legacy statement, participating in facilitated dialogue sessions, and writing curated reflection journal entries within an REU. Through critical self-reflection exercises, we are beginning to find growth of first-year and transfer STEM undergraduates in the following areas: understanding of their role in the lab; confidence in their researcher identity; expression of agency; observation and communication skills; and intentionality for action. Participating in this self-reflection allows students to make meaning of their experience enabling them to hone the aforementioned characteristics that creates a pathway from their undergraduate experience to undergraduate degree completion, graduate degree attainment, and to the STEM workforce. 

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4. Teaching virtual protein‐centric CUREs and UREs using computational tools

   Bell, Anthony. ( September 2020 , Biochemistry and molecular biology education)

   Responding to the need to teach remotely due to COVID-19, we used readily available computational approaches (and developed associated tutorials (https://mdh-cures-community.squarespace.com/virtual-cures-and-ures)) to teach virtual Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) laboratories that fulfil generally accepted main components of CUREs or Undergraduate Research Experiences (UREs): Scientific Background, Hypothesis Development, Proposal, Experiments, Teamwork, Data Analysis, Conclusions, and Presentation1. We then developed and taught remotely, in three phases, protein-centric CURE activities that are adaptable to virtually any protein, emphasizing contributions of noncovalent interactions to structure, binding and catalysis (an ASBMB learning framework2 foundational concept). The courses had five learning goals (unchanged in the virtual format),focused on i) use of primary literature and bioinformatics, ii) the roles of non-covalent interactions, iii) keeping accurate laboratory notebooks, iv) hypothesis development and research proposal writing, and, v) presenting the project and drawing evidence based conclusions The first phase, Developing a Research Proposal, contains three modules, and develops hallmarks of a good student-developed hypothesis using available literature (PubMed3) and preliminary observations obtained using bioinformatics, Module 1: Using Primary Literature and Data Bases (Protein Data Base4, Blast5 and Clustal Omega6), Module 2: Molecular Visualization (PyMol7 and Chimera8), culminating in a research proposal (Module 3). Provided rubrics guide student expectations. In the second phase, Preparing the Proteins, students prepared necessary proteins and mutants using Module 4: Creating and Validating Models, which leads users through creating mutants with PyMol, homology modeling with Phyre29 or Missense10, energy minimization using RefineD11 or ModRefiner12, and structure validation using MolProbity13. In the third phase, Computational Experimental Approaches to Explore the Questions developed from the Hypothesis, students selected appropriate tools to perform their experiments, chosen from computational techniques suitable for a CURE laboratory class taught remotely. Questions, paired with computational approaches were selected from Modules 5: Exploring Titratable Groups in a Protein using H++14, 6: Exploring Small Molecule Ligand Binding (with SwissDock15), 7: Exploring Protein-Protein Interaction (with HawkDock16), 8: Detecting and Exploring Potential Binding Sites on a Protein (with POCASA17 and SwissDock), and 9: Structure-Activity Relationships of Ligand Binding & Drug Design (with SwissDock, Open Eye18 or the Molecular Operating Environment (MOE)19). All involve freely available computational approaches on publicly accessible web-based servers around the world (with the exception of MOE). Original literature/Journal club activities on approaches helped students suggest tie-ins to wet lab experiments they could conduct in the future to complement their computational approaches. This approach allowed us to continue using high impact CURE teaching, without changing our course learning goals. Quantitative data (including replicates) was collected and analyzed during regular class periods. Students developed evidence-based conclusions and related them to their research questions and hypotheses. Projects culminated in a presentation where faculty feedback was facilitated with the Virtual Presentation platform from QUBES20 These computational approaches are readily adaptable for topics accessible for first to senior year classes and individual research projects (UREs). We used them in both partial and full semester CUREs in various institutional settings. We believe this format can benefit faculty and students from a wide variety of teaching institutions under conditions where remote teaching is necessary. 

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5. Advancing undergraduate research through regional community college partnerships at Portland State University

   Rice, A. ; Loikith, P. ; Murry, A. ( December 2023 , Transactions American Geophysical Union)

   Opportunities for undergraduate research in STEM programs at community colleges can be few where lower-division science curriculum emphasizes classroom and laboratory-based learning and research laboratories are limited in number. This is particularly true in the geosciences where specialized programs are extremely rare. Urban serving academic research institutions have a unique role and opportunity to partner with regional community college programs for undergraduate research early-on in student post-secondary educational experiences. Programs built for community college transfer students to urban serving undergraduate programs can serve to integrate students into major programs and help reduce transfer shock. The benefits of exploring research as an undergraduate scholar are numerous and include: building towards mastery of technical skills; developing problem-solving in a real-world environment; reading and digesting scientific literature; analyzing experimental and simulation data; working independently and as part of a team; developing a mentoring relationship with a research advisor; and building a sense of belonging and confidence in a scientific field. However, many undergraduate research internships are targeted towards junior-level STEM majors already engaged in upper-division coursework and considering graduate school which effectively excludes community college students from participating. The Center for Climate and Aerosol Research (CCAR) Research Experience for Undergraduate program at Portland State University serves to help build the future diverse research community. 10-week intern research experiences are paired with an expert faculty mentor are designed for students majoring in the natural/physical sciences but not necessarily with a background in climate or atmospheric science. Additional programmatic activities include: 1-week orientation and training using short courses, faculty research seminars, and hands-on group workshops; academic professional and career development workshops throughout summer; journal club activities; final presentations at end of summer CCAR symposium; opportunities for travel for student presentations at scientific conferences; and social activities. Open to all qualifying undergraduates, since 2014 the program recruits primarily from regional (Northwest) community colleges, rural schools, and Native American serving institutions; recruiting students who would be unlikely to be otherwise exposed to such opportunities at their home institution. Over the past 9 cohorts of REU interns (2014-2019), approximately one third of CCAR REU scholars are community colleges students. Here we present criteria employed for selection of REU scholars and an analysis of selection biases in a comparison of students from community colleges, 4-year colleges, and PhD granting universities. We further investigate differential outcomes in efficacy of the REU program using evaluation data to assess changes over the program including: knowledge, intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, science identity, program satisfaction, and career aspirations. In this presentation, we present these findings along with supportive qualitative analyses and discuss their implications for community college students in undergraduate research programs in geosciences. 

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