Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) are an effective way to integrate research into an undergraduate science curriculum and extend research experiences to a large, diverse group of early-career students. We developed a biology CURE at the University of Miami (UM) called the UM Authentic Research Laboratories (UMARL), in which groups of first-year students investigated novel questions and conducted projects of their own design related to the research themes of the faculty instructors. Herein, we describe the implementation and student outcomes of this long-running CURE. Using a national survey of student learning through research experiences in courses, we found that UMARL led to high student self-reported learning gains in research skills such as data analysis and science communication, as well as personal development skills such as self-confidence and self-efficacy. Our analysis of academic outcomes revealed that the odds of students who took UMARL engaging in individual research, graduating with a degree in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) within 4 years, and graduating with honors were 1.5–1.7 times greater than the odds for a matched group of students from UM’s traditional biology labs. The authenticity of UMARL may have fostered students’ confidence that they can do real research, reinforcing their persistence in STEM.

Vol. 18, No. 3

September 01, 2019

Supplemental Materials

Metrics

Downloads & Citations

Downloads: 700

Citations: 16

History

Submitted: 16 July 2018

Revised: 6 May 2019

Accepted: 9 May 2019

Information

© 2019 J. L. Indorf, J. Weremijewicz, et al. CBE—Life Sciences Education © 2019 The American Society for Cell Biology. This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). It is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0).

We thank the many UM faculty who brought their research to the UMARL courses. We also thank the many graduate student teaching assistants and undergraduate peer facilitators who taught alongside faculty. We thank Leslie Jaworski and David Lopatto for providing CURE survey means and national data. The comments and suggestions of the editor and two anonymous reviewers greatly improved this article. This biology laboratory course was developed and implemented with the support of two Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) grants (M.S.G., principal investigator: grants 52003758 and 52005903). Opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of HHMI. The laboratory course was supported and institutionalized by the UM College of Arts and Sciences. Approval for this research was granted by UM’s Institutional Review Board for the use of human subjects in research (protocol 20150009).

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