Rebecca Hunter
College of New Jersey, NJ·Education Research
Doing real research as an undergraduate strengthens students' sense of themselves as scientists, keeps them in STEM fields and builds analytical and teamwork skills. Traditional one-on-one apprenticeships in a faculty lab cannot reach most students.
- Fields
Education Research
Chemistry
- Topics
course-based undergraduate research experiences
STEM education
analytical chemistry
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Sep 2029
What they work on
- 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.
- Deploy a differentiated 2:1 mentorship model alongside custom-trained generative AI assistants that provide real-time pedagogical and technical support to new faculty implementers.
- Develop graduate teaching assistant training, support structures and scaffolded instructional materials that make CURE implementation sustainable in teaching labs at research-intensive universities.
- Identify the factors driving lasting adoption across 21 new institutions in three cohorts, using pre- and post-implementation questionnaires, interviews, mentor plans and laboratory materials coded for inquiry level and science practices.
More about the research
Course-based undergraduate research experiences, or CUREs, embed genuine discovery into a regular lab course and are the most scalable alternative, yet relatively few departments have adopted them. This project asks what it actually takes for a CURE to take root at very different kinds of institutions, and how to support faculty who try.
Why it matters
Most undergraduates never get a research apprenticeship. If this work identifies what makes CUREs stick at both teaching-focused colleges and large research universities, it could give many more chemistry students authentic research experience in their regular courses, with transferable training models, graduate teaching assistant supports and open materials other departments can adopt.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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.
Nia Bauer
Arapahoe Community College, CO·Education Research
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.
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.
The school
College of New Jersey: 2 labs on PI Pages, $3M a year on research.
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