Molecular Parasitology
Swati Agrawal, University of Mary Washington
In Spring 2021, we piloted a mini-CURE where student groups from University of Mary Washington and Georgia State University collaboratively completed research projects as part of a research-intensive course on Molecular Parasitology. The benefits of this approach were immediately obvious as students interacted across institutions, learned from each other's disciplinary expertise while informing their own research with data collected by their collaborators.

Biomass conversion into highly useful chemicals
SAPNA JAIN, Alabama State University
This is CURE based course that aims at bridging the gap between theoretical knowledge in chemistry and its practical applications at solving real-world problems. It gives students an opportunity to construct and synthesize their knowledge and skills by learning to apply theoretical knowledge to practice by the laboratory research. The purpose of this course is to acquaint students with the fundamental concepts of chemistry, synthetic methods and techniques. The emphasis will be on novel catalysts synthesis and evaluating their activity towards biomass conversion to liquid fuel and useful chemicals. Students will design synthesize, deduce identities of the biomass conversion products from chemical and spectral clues, and predict reaction products.

Organismal Form and Function Lab
Christopher Oufiero, Towson University
Invertebrates use movement of their bodies and structures in diverse ways to interact with their environment. This includes general locomotion (e.g., walking, jumping, flying) to specific forms of locomotion (e.g., gliding on water), using limbs to acquire food (e.g., raptorial forelegs in the praying mantis) and using structures to communicate (e.g., cricket calls). These movements have been the focus of bioinspiration studies to understand how these small organisms, with compact nervous systems, are able to achieve their movements. Given the diversity of invertebrates and the lack of information on the variation in their movements, the goals of this course are to understand the variation in invertebrate movement and explore the factors that may affect that variation. In this course, students have the opportunity to develop and test their own research hypotheses associated with variation in the movement of invertebrates. Using high-speed cameras, students are instructed on filming techniques to quantify animal movement, the use of the R programming language to obtain basic kinematics of movement and analyze their data, and the process of science from hypothesis formation to presentation of results. Research questions change each iteration based upon the hypotheses students develop, but the same instructional material and skillsets (e.g., quantifying animal movement) are consistently used. Results from each student group are presented during a departmental wide poster symposium and can be written up for publication, where applicable.

U-CARE: Undergraduate Coral Aquarium Research Experience
Matthew Partin, Bowling Green State University-Main Campus
After completing their gateway biology courses (sophomore or junior year) marine biology students at BGSU enroll in a required Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) called BIOL 3700: Introduction to Inland Marine Research. This course teaches advanced aquarium husbandry, along with aquarium sciences, and aquarium research methods. Other skills taught in the class include scientific design, data collection, and analysis. A large portion of the course is dedicated to conducting research with coral fragments housed in the BGSU Marine Lab. Students work in small groups to answer questions concerning the morphology and growth rates of a variety of coral species based on variables such as water flow (pattern or intensity), light (cycle, color, or intensity), or diet (food type, frequency, or amount). Results are uploaded to a public database to address the long-term goal of predictably inducing corals to spawn in aquaria. Data is shared publically with interested stakeholders.All students in the CURE course are assigned a peer research Learning Assistant (rLA) to serve as a mentor. rLAs are undergraduates who have previously performed well in the course and have advanced knowledge of the Marine Lab, coral husbandry, and the research process. Each rLA oversees 1 group of 5 students. Students meet with the rLAs and instructor weekly. The instructor meets with the rLAs for weekly husbandry and pedagogy training, as well as discussing progress and needs in the CURE research projects.

Community Flood Risk Assessment from Rising/Surging Seas Project
Kevin Kupietz, Elizabeth City State University
Globally 634 million people, 10% of the world's population, live in coastal areas less than 10 meters above sea level. According to 2010 census data, 123 million people, 39% of the United States population, live in coastal counties with an estimated increase to this number by 8% in the 2020 census. As natural disasters have been seen to increase in frequency and severity in the past five years coupled with expected sea rises from climate change it is important that anyone involved with the safety and resiliency planning of their organization/community have an understanding of how to scientifically assess risk from flooding in order to mitigate and recover from the effects. This project allows students the ability to develop skills to utilize computer modeling systems and to apply the data to real world communities in examining risk to structures as well as different groups in the community.

Resequencing of Commercial Microorganisms
Jessica Kaufman, Endicott College
Students choose a probiotic pill or product with labeling that indicates the species and strain of bacteria in the product. Products are chosen so that a high quality reference genome sequence is available on NCBI. After DNA isolation and library preparation, high-quality student samples are pooled for next-gen sequencing on an Illumina MiSeq. The following semester, students in the required bioinformatics course will analyze the FASTQ files from the NGS run with a simple variant call workflow on usegalaxy.org. Then, each student will use a R Shiny app developed for this CURE to convert the VCF output from Galaxy to a FASTA file for an assigned gene in the resequenced genome. Students will complete their research experience by submitting the FASTA file to the NCBI Nucleotide Database.

Exploring the Structure-Function Relationship in RNA Biochemistry

MCC: Malate Dehydrogenase CUREs Community
Ellis Bell, University of San Diego
The Malate Dehydrogenase CUREs Community (MCC) project is designed to facilitate the adoption of effective, protein‐centric, Course Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) into teaching labs at a wide variety of undergraduate serving institutions. (Primarily Undergraduate Institutions, Research Intensive Universities and Community Colleges) MCC coordinates and conducts pedagogical research into two major features of CUREs:1) their duration (whole semester versus 5‐6 week modules incorporated into a lab class), and 2) the impact of scientific collaboration between institutions (a key aspect of much modern research). Using validated assessment tools we seek to establish their effects on student confidence, persistence in STEM, and ability to design research experiments and interprete data. To facilitate faculty adoption of CURE approaches the project provides a number of resources. These focus on a variety of research areas related to Malate Dehydrogenase including mechanisms of catalysis and regulation, adaptation and evolution, cofactor specificity, folding and stability and interactions in metabolons. Resources include biologics, experimental protocols and assessment tools. The project also coordinates interactions between courses at different institutions to allow incorporation of scientific collaboration into CUREs. These collaborations also facilitate the use of more sophisticated experimental approaches and broaden the experimental scope of the CUREs.

Histology CURE Lab in Breast Cancer
Aylin Marz, Norfolk State University

Using Artificial Intelligence in Introductory Programming Courses
Ernst Bekkering, Northeastern State University
This CURE is part of the introductory programming course in the Computer Science major at our university. When AI gained the ability to generate computer code, it became apparent that this would have major impact on how programming courses were going to be taught. In addition to code generation and auto-completion during manual development, it can be used for bug detection and testing, generating internal and external documentation, translating between different programming languages, refactoring code, and others. Not all these uses are relevant to introductory programming classes, but students can start building their skills using AI in this class.In this CURE, students learn how to evaluate AI engines objectively with regard to their ability to produce simple computer programs appropriate for the level of this course. Students can use the AI engines they themselves select, free or for pay; they can construct their own measurement instruments, simple or complex; and they use simple statistical analysis in Excel to evaluate the results. Finally, students submit their reports in a format used by an academic conference which introduces them to a professional level of research.