An official website of the United States government
Providing hands-on learning experiences increases student understanding of theory and practices in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. The experience gives students motivation and allows them to focus their career path towards completing a degree in a STEM field. This paper provides initial observations on the learning impact of community college students and their instructors participating in the Support Center for Microsystems Education 2021 Undergraduate Research Experience. Twenty undergraduate community college students and their instructors participated in a week-long hands-on project-based course in a cleanroom environment. Both students and instructors showed an increase in the level of knowledge regarding microfabricating based on the collected survey results after completing the program. Survey results and observations of participating mentors are presented.
more »
« less
An Inclusive Summer Research Experience Promotes Minority Student Engagement in STEM.
Lane College is a Historically Black College with a mission to educate underserved minority students. As part of a primarily undergraduate teaching institution, the Division of Natural and Physical Sciences provides students with a variety of hands-on experiences, including an eight-week summer research experience. Prior to the implementation of the Lane College summer research experience, only a small number of students participated in summer research or internships at other institutions. The Lane College summer undergraduate research experience aims to be more inclusive by eliminating GPA requirements, encouraging first- and second-year students to apply, and allowing students to select any of the available research projects in the areas of biology, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, or physics, regardless of major. Each year, twelve to fifteen students participate in mentored research in the areas of biology, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, and physics. The students participate in a professional development course twice per week where they learn about career opportunities in science and mathematics, preparing personal statements, scientific writing, and practice on how to effectively present their research findings. The students conduct their research in small groups with a faculty mentor. At the end of the summer, students present their overall results at the Lane Summer Science Symposium. Evaluation of student attitudes towards the research experience during the first iteration in summer 2021 indicates students internalized STEM community values, and developed a sense of self-efficacy for research, a strong sense of project ownership, and a sense of belonging to the science research community. Students participating in the evaluation believe that the experience made science more interesting and that they have better clarity of career opportunities in STEM. Similar levels of engagement were observed in the summers of 2022 and 2023. Students participating in the program are encouraged to submit abstracts to both regional and national conferences. This has resulted in 14 students presenting annually at discipline-specific conferences and one publication co-authored by two summer research students. This work is supported by grants NSF EES 2011938 and EDU 1833960.
more »
« less
- PAR ID:
- 10505367
- Publisher / Repository:
- American Society for Cell Biology
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Molecular biology of the cell
- Volume:
- 35
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 1939-4586
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 246-247
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
ABSTRACT Traditional lecture-centered approaches alone are inadequate for preparing students for the challenges of creative problem solving in the STEM disciplines. As an alternative, learnercentered and other high-impact pedagogies are gaining prominence. The Wabash College 3D Printing and Fabrication Center (3D-PFC) supports several initiatives on campus, but one of the most successful is a computer-aided design (CAD) and fabrication-based undergraduate research internship program. The first cohort of four students participated in an eight-week program during the summer of 2015. A second group of the four students was successfully recruited to participate the following summer. This intensive materials science research experience challenged students to employ digital design and fabrication in the design, testing, and construction of inexpensive scientific instrumentation for use in introductory STEM courses at Wabash College. The student research interns ultimately produced a variety of successful new designs that could be produced for less than $25 per device and successfully detect analytes of interest down to concentrations in the parts per million (ppm) range. These student-produced instruments have enabled innovations in the way introductory instrumental analysis is taught on campus. Beyond summer work, the 3D-PFC staffed student interns during the academic year, where they collaborated on various cross-disciplinary projects with students and faculty from departments such as mathematics, physics, biology, rhetoric, history, classics, and English. Thus far, the student work has led to three campus presentations, four presentations at national professional conferences, and three peer-reviewed publications. The following report highlights initial progress as well as preliminary assessment findings.more » « less
-
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.more » « less
-
Lane College is a small, liberal arts, Historically Black College in Jackson, TN. The Division of Natural and Physical Sciences provides undergraduate research experiences for students majoring in biology, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, or physics. To increase inclusivity, all students within one of the five majors are encouraged to apply, regardless of GPA, classification, or previous research experience. This eight-week program features a bi-weekly professional development session and a symposium at the end of the program where students present their research findings. During the summer of 2023, seven biology students completed a metagenomics research study with the goal to explore the biodiversity of different local freshwater aquatic environments. The students collected water samples from four local ponds with metadata such as pH, temperature, dissolved oxygen, and GPS coordinates. Initial observations of aquatic life using microscopy and dichotomous keys were made. The DNA was extracted from the samples using ethanol precipitation followed by clean-up with the ZymoBIOMICS DNA Miniprep kit. DNA was amplified using the Nanopore Rapid PCR barcoding kit or the 16S PCR barcoding kit and sequenced with the Nanopore MinION Mk1C. DNA sequences were initially analyzed using the Nanopore Minnow and Epi2Me What's in My Pot Workflows. Each student explored the subsequent data to answer specific research questions about the biodiversity in each environment, such as the impact of pH, dissolved oxygen, whether the pond was static or free flowing, or the presence of different pathogenic or toxic microbes. Overall, they found that while there was some overlap, aquatic organisms varied in the ponds depending on whether the pond was static or free flowing, pH, dissolved oxygen, and location. Some of the students continued these research projects during the fall 2023 semester in the Biology Undergraduate Research course where they refined their research questions and analyzed the data using additional bioinformatics tools available on Galaxy.more » « less
-
Recent reviews of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education conclude that engagement of undergraduate students in research generally broadens future participation in research and increased retention in STEM. Towards the goal of investing in a sustained and diverse atmospheric science research community, the Center for Climate and Aerosol Research (CCAR) at Portland State University (PSU) introduced a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program in 2014 with the objective of providing atmospheric science summer research experiences to promising students in STEM disciplines from rural Northwest and Native American communities who would be unlikely to be otherwise exposed to such opportunities at their home institution. The PSU CCAR REU site is focused on student research in areas of atmospheric chemistry, physics, air quality, meteorology and climate change. For 10 weeks, students conduct research with an expert faculty mentor and participate in activities such as a short courses, faculty research seminars, and hands-on group workshops; academic professional and career development workshops; journal club activities; and opportunities for travel for student presentations at scientific conferences; and social activities. The program ends with a paper based on their summer research, which is presented via poster and oral presentations during our concluding CCAR symposium. Evaluation data from seven cohorts (2014-2021) of the CCAR REU (N = 70) was used to explore how science identity had changed over the course of the program, as well as what predicted positive increases in science identity. Change was assessed using paired-sample t-tests. To explore the predictors of change, we ran an exploratory stepwise regression where the difference score in science identity items from pre- to post-program was predicted by similar changes in knowledge, intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and career aspirations, demographic characteristics (e.g., age, gender), and mid-program satisfaction and met expectations. In this presentation, we present these findings along with supportive qualitative analyses and discuss their implications for undergraduate research programs in geoscience fields.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Proceeding:
- The DOI is not currently available.
