Beschreibung:
Faculty are expected to establish and maintain research productivity, while demonstrating continuous innovation and improvement in teaching, especially at primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs). These expectations can be quite daunting for early career faculty. However, a client‐based classroom undergraduate research experience (CUREs) can help faculty “clients” start research projects, provide professional development, recruit trained undergraduate research students and gain experience. At the University of Wisconsin‐La Crosse, each semester at least four different 300 and 400‐level biology and biochemistry courses, use the CURE model with fellow faculty members, often junior faculty, as clients. CURE instructors advise clients on the design and feasibility of specific projects in the multi‐week framework of the specific CURE course. With a reasonable research plan in mind, clients present the background, rationale and hypothesis as well as a basic outline of the experimental plan to students. In class sizes of 20–30, teams of 2–4 students work collaboratively on a research product (assay, mutant, clone, a set of data) and provide research documentation in the form of a complete lab notebook and final report. Clients and CURE instructors work together to guide students though each step of the experimental process, defining the molecular bases of techniques along the way. In the end, clients receive a formal lab report, research product and lab notebooks from students. In post CURE project surveys and interviews, clients reflected on the experience(s) in terms of usefulness to their research program, instructional development and career advancement. Instructor experiences were also evaluated in interviews. Based on responses by clients and CURE instructors, best practices could be established to make client‐based CURE a sustainable model for faculty development.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.