SMC Author

Vidya Chandraskaran - faculty Don Paetkau - Student

SMC Affiliated Work

1

Author Role

co-author

Status

Multi

School

School of Science

Department

Biology

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-13-2014

Publication / Conference / Sponsorship

CBE—Life Sciences Education

Editor

Erin Dolan

Description/Abstract

In their 2012 report, the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology advocated “replacing standard science laboratory courses with discovery-based research courses”—a challenging proposition that presents practical and pedagogical difficulties. In this paper, we describe our collective experiences working with the Genomics Education Partnership, a nationwide faculty consortium that aims to provide undergraduates with a research experience in genomics through a scheduled course (a classroom-based undergraduate research experience, or CURE). We examine the common barriers encountered in implementing a CURE, program elements of most value to faculty, ways in which a shared core support system can help, and the incentives for and rewards of establishing a CURE on our diverse campuses. While some of the barriers and rewards are specific to a research project utilizing a genomics approach, other lessons learned should be broadly applicable. We find that a central system that supports a shared investigation can mitigate some shortfalls in campus infrastructure (such as time for new curriculum development, availability of IT services) and provides collegial support for change. Our findings should be useful for designing similar supportive programs to facilitate change in the way we teach science for undergraduates.

DOI

10.1187/cbe.13-10-0200

Volume

13

Issue

4

First Page

711

Last Page

723

Disciplines

Biology | Life Sciences

Rights

Open Access. Author manuscript (arXiv).

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

Original Citation

Lopatto D, Hauser C, Jones CJ, Paetkau D, Chandrasekaran V, Dunbar D, MacKinnon C et. al., A Central Support System Can Facilitate Implementation and Sustainability of a Classroom-Based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) in Genomics. CBE Life Sci Educ. 13(4):711-23, Oct. 13, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.13-10-0200

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