Many undergraduate students, particularly underrepresented populations, begin their academic training at community colleges, where they complete their introductory coursework. Introductory courses often serve as “the gateways into science” for many students (AAAS 2011) and represent a largely non targeted population of students when it comes to undergraduate research. Ballen (2017) has issued a call to develop research experiences for this untargeted population of non-majors STEM students. To address this, we developed a Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) in a non-majors introductory biology course at Phoenix College. CURE’s are a high-impact practice shown to improve student engagement, retention, completion, and skill-set development in STEM fields. CUREs have traditionally been offered at four-year institutions where they often target STEM majors in upper level courses. Phoenix College is a community college in the 10 college Maricopa Community College District. Its approximately 17,000 strong student body is 56% Hispanic and 71% are first generation college students. This presentation will outline a non-majors biology course designed to involve students in iterative, real-world problem solving for a community client. The use of community-based science is expected to increase student interest and recruitment into STEM fields.
Results/Conclusions
In this CURE, the students were tasked with creating an interactive digital map of the interesting plants of the Phoenix Zoo, the largest privately owned, non-profit zoo in the United States. Students developed a scope of work and created interactive map prototypes. At the end of the semester, students presented their interactive maps to the zoo and reported back on the pros and cons of different map creation services. They developed skills and experience with GIS, as well as basic science and information literacy. All the students in the introductory non-majors BIO108 course participated. A template for non-majors CUREs was developed and followed. The template included lessons and assessments to guide students through the research and development phases. Additional CUREs are being piloted, using the template. Additional faculty have been trained on CUREs and introduced to the template. The projected impact of this program is expected to extend to more than 3000 community college students by the culmination of the grant. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1832543. Integrating Research, Mentoring, and Industry Collaborations to Improve STEM Recruitment and Retention.