Major

Microbiology

Advisor

Neil, Greene

Advisor Department

Cell and Molecular Biology

Date

5-2023

Keywords

cell and molecular biology; undergraduate research; science education

Abstract

The Cell and Molecular Biology Department at the University of Rhode Island has a gap between introductory and advanced laboratory courses offered to undergraduate students. The implementation of a Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) catered towards second- and third-year undergraduate students would benefit both students and faculty. A CMB-based CURE would allow for the integration of all four tracks within the CMB major through hands-on laboratory experience and create a low-stakes environment for students to practice independent experimental thinking. Students

will reinforce basic laboratory skills and be exposed to novel concepts that can be further explored in detail through advanced coursework. Additionally, faculty could use this CURE to recruit students to join their research laboratories. The overall goal of this project is to compare available CUREs, such as SEA-PHAGES and Tiny Earth, as well as a URI faculty-created CURE to find the best fit for the URI CMB curriculum. SEA- PHAGES (Science Education Alliance-Phage Hunters Advancing Genomics and

Evolutionary Science) focuses on bacteriophage isolation and identification. Tiny Earth explores antibiotic discovery, isolation, and characterization from local soil samples. A URI-driven CURE would be similar to courses at the University of Colorado Boulder or Brown University, in that it would leverage a specific faculty member’s research program to create a curriculum based on their topic of interest. A literature review was conducted, and it was determined that Tiny Earth would be the best fit for the CMB curriculum based on flexibility, resources, accessible financially. A syllabus and an example lesson plan for the "Getting To Know Your Isolates” aspect which utilizes 16s rRNA sequencing were created. Collectively, this project aims to show the CMB faculty that a CURE is valuable and manageable to implement. The final aspect of this project is to present salient details of the literature review, the proposed syllabus, and aspects of the lesson plan to the CMB faculty.

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