Nia Bauer
Arapahoe Community College, CO·Education Research
Doing real research as an undergraduate makes students more likely to pursue science careers and graduate school. However, community college students rarely get these chances.
- Fields
Education Research
Biology
- Topics
course-based undergraduate research experiences
community college
two-year college
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Sep 2027
What they work on
- Develop course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) of variable length for biology courses and labs and for three non-biology courses, with a shared repository of curricula for in-person, hybrid and remote teaching.
- Train about 60 faculty along with lab-prep staff, tutors and advisors to run CUREs, guided by a task force that includes the student STEM STARS group.
- Use a mixed-methods study to measure how CUREs affect community college students' learning, attitudes, confidence and course completion, and how comfortable and capable faculty feel teaching them.
- Identify the opportunities and barriers to sustaining variable-length CUREs at two-year institutions.
More about the research
Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) build authentic research projects into regular classes, so that every enrolled student takes part, not just a few selected for a lab. Little research has looked at how CUREs work at two-year colleges.
Why it matters
Community college students are often shut out of research experiences that steer students toward STEM degrees and careers. A tested, sustainable model for building research into everyday courses, with shared materials and lessons learned, could help other two-year colleges raise STEM persistence and completion. It also supports Colorado's goal of increasing STEM credentials.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Ross Stites
Kansas City Kansas Community College, KS·Education Research
Increase the number of STEM courses at a two-year college that use course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs), in which an entire class carries out authentic research as part of the course.
Arthur Sikora
Nova Southeastern University, FL·Education Research
Identify the supports for and barriers to implementing and sustaining the BASIL biochemistry CURE across institution types, using faculty surveys, implementation plans and semi-structured interviews.
Rebecca Hunter
College of New Jersey, NJ·Education Research
Apply the Teacher-Centered Systemic Reform framework, which treats instructional beliefs, practices, personal and contextual factors as drivers of change, as a diagnostic tool to characterize each institution's barriers to adopting the networked chemistry CURE.
The school
Arapahoe Community College: 1 labs on PI Pages.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.