Undergraduate institutions are putting increased emphasis on place-based learning as well as course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) in order to increase student engagement and post-graduate preparedness. Both of these methods are high impact for students, however, professors may lack motivation to initiate them due to the perception that CUREs and other place-based learning fail to produce publishable data. One possible solution is to integrate an established research program with an undergraduate CURE via collaboration across institutions. Here, we describe a semester-long, place-based CURE for an undergraduate Animal Behavior course that involved a mutualistic collaboration between three institutions: the “local” institution is situated in the heart of the field research region where the two “distant” institutions’ researchers have long-term and ongoing research. This model makes use of remote conferencing technology and strategic collaboration to meet the needs of all stakeholders.
Results/Conclusions
This synergistic CURE allowed undergraduate participants to engage as active participants in collaborative inquiry based work with researchers from the two distant institutions, complete outcome oriented work, learn in a cooperative context, and even participate in the publication process. The local principal investigator and their institution were able to contribute a high impact course that effectively integrated research and teaching. Likewise, the partnering institutions and distant principal investigators collected more extensive and longer-term field-based data than otherwise possible and gained valuable input and observations from the local undergraduate researchers that allowed them to develop future research projects. We conclude with student feedback and reception on the course as well as recommendations for designing a similar program at other institutions to improve the quality of undergraduate research and teaching in ecology. Remote collaborations like this open the door to international collaborations with smaller institutions garnering greater inclusion in science as well as more comprehensive data for researchers.