For STEM undergraduate students, research experiences are formative. They put the scientific method into practice, teach lab skills, and inform scientific interests and career decisions. But at large universities, the number of STEM undergraduate students far outnumbers the available positions in faculty research labs. Faculty labs can only accommodate a fraction of interested students, making classroom-based research experiences an increasingly important pathway into STEM research.
At UC Davis, Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences, or CUREs, provide an alternative path to real-world research. They allow students to conduct authentic scientific research in the classroom. A new study appearing in the Journal of Chemical Education shows that CURE classes are an effective way of bolstering student confidence and sense of belonging in the sciences.
The study examined first-year and transfer student experiences in a 10-week long CURE class that teaches a laser-based imaging technique used to study protein aggregation. Protein aggregation occurs when misfolded proteins stick to one another. It’s associated with over 30 diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease and type II diabetes.
“Characterization of protein aggregation is critical to determining the mechanisms underlying neurodegenerative disease,” said Whitney Duim, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor of teaching in the Department of Chemistry at the College of Letters and Science. “All you need for this class is an interest in trying research.”
Duim and her coauthor Emily Liu, one of the first students to take the protein aggregation CURE class, conducted pre- and post-CURE surveys with students enrolled in the class. Students reported that the class provided an authentic research experience, improved scientific self-efficacy and sense of belonging, and taught transferable skills for future research activities and careers.
“These benefits are especially important for attracting and retaining STEM majors at large public universities such as UC Davis, which has a highly diverse student body, is a Hispanic-Serving Institution, and admits many transfer students every year,” Duim said.
Why undergraduate research matters for STEM students
Duim has taught the CURE class “Nanoscale characterization of protein aggregates involved in human disease” since 2022.
Over 10 weeks, students learn lab techniques, read and evaluate scientific literature, receive safety training and learn a leading-edge imaging technique known as super-resolution fluorescence microscopy. Each week, the class meets for two hours and students are assigned roughly two to four hours’ worth of reading and homework.
“In the final weeks of the course, students perform a scaffolded activity of writing an abstract describing their research,” Duim said. “The final deliverables in the class are the abstract and their presentation slides containing one processed and analyzed super-resolution image.”
In the class, the students characterized the aggregation of C-peptide and serum albumin, proteins which appear to play roles in diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases. The protein characterization work in the CURE class is part of a collaborative research project between Duim and Associate Professor of Chemistry Marie Heffern.
“Students appreciate the opportunity to conduct experiments where the results are unknown, and having the time to troubleshoot problems and repeat experiments. Discovery and iteration are key features of authentic research that are found in CUREs, features that are not typically emphasized in traditional laboratory courses,” Duim said.
How research classes build confidence and belonging
The researchers found that most of the students in the CURE class reported “large” and “very large” gains in the following areas:
- Understanding the research process in their field
- Learning laboratory techniques
- Ability to read and understand primary literature
- Understanding how scientists think
- Understanding how scientists work on real problems
Students reported that the class made them feel welcome on the UC Davis campus, with one writing, “I think it helped me realize that very few students arrive at UCD with everything figured out, especially in terms of research plans and experience, which has helped me feel less like I am disproportionately unqualified for research opportunities here at UCD.”
Why CUREs matter at large universities
Duim said that the CURE’s 10-week curriculum is adaptable, potentially being transferable to the semester system or being stretched across multiple quarters.
“Parts of the CURE could also be turned into entire CUREs on their own, allowing time for more in-depth exploration,” she said.
Such examples include a CURE focused on using artificial intelligence to assist with literature reviews for protein aggregation research, optimizing sample preparation for super-resolution imaging, and more deeply exploring instrumentation and microscopy techniques, to name a few.
“The benefits of CUREs have been demonstrated in a wide-variety of contexts, and UC Davis has a vibrant community of CUREs through its First-Year Seminars program. The Design2Data CURE of Justin Siegel and Ashley Vater, for example, has been hugely successful at UC Davis and throughout its network of offerings at other institutions,” Duim said. “My hope is that more professors at UC Davis will consider bringing their cutting-edge research to first-year and transfer students in the CURE classroom.”
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