Unit 2.2 - Basic Critical Zone Concepts
Ashlee Dere, University of Nebraska at Omaha; Susan Gill, Stroud Water Research Center
Students will learn about geoscience-specific methods used to analyze data in the Critical Zone from data-driven activities and short presentations by their peers. The topics include the use of carbon isotopes, ...

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.

Constructing Phylogenetic Trees: The Whippo Story
Scott Cooper, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
An interactive lecture in which students use data on feeding habits and habitat, skeletons, and DNA sequences to draw phylogenetic trees. -

The Great Clade Race - Zombie Island Edition
Rowan Martindale, The University of Texas at Austin; David Goldsmith, Westminster College (UT)
This activity is a modification of the "Great Clade Race" (Goldsmith, 2003). This activity is great for helping students understand cladograms/phylogenies, but the original reinforces some problematic ...

Candy Phylogeny
Lisa Whitenack, Allegheny College
Students learn how make phylogenetic trees from morphological data using a variety of candy. Techniques and concepts learned include outgroup analysis, making a character matrix, coding characters, parsimony, ...

"Reef Survivor" Board Game - High School Advanced Placement Environmental Sciences Edition (Complex)
Rowan Martindale, The University of Texas at Austin; Enrique Reyes, The University of Texas at Austin; Sabrina Ewald, The University of Texas at Austin
"Reef Survivor" is a board game that can be used as an active learning tool in a class or lab to promote understanding of Earth processes (Geology), Aquatic Sciences, and Marine Biology. The educational ...

Design2Data
Ashley Vater, University of California-Davis
The D2D program is centered around an undergraduate-friendly protocol workflow that follows the design-build-test-learn engineering framework. This protocol has served as the scaffold for a successful undergraduate training program and has been further developed into courses that range from a 10-week freshman seminar to a year-long, upper-division molecular biology course. The overarching research goal of this CURE probes the current predictive limitations of protein-modeling software by functionally characterizing single amino acid mutants in a robust model system. The most interesting outcomes of this project are dependent on large datasets, and, as such, the project is optimal for multi-institutional collaborations.

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.

Unit 2: Causes of Mass Extinction
Rebecca Teed, Wright State University-Main Campus
During Unit 2, students will learn about the causes of two past mass extinctions and discuss the controversies surrounding these causes and the evidence upon which the theories in the debates are based. Before ...

Characterising the prokaryotic ATPase-ome
Alice Robson, University of Bristol
Students work in teams of 3-4 trying to identify and characterise putative ATPase enzymes from prokaryotic organisms. Each student identifies a putative uncharacterised ATPase gene from a range of prokaryotes (archaea and bacteria), and uses bioinformatic methods to characterise the gene. They then work in teams in the lab to clone, express and purify their chosen proteins; finally they characterise the protein using spectrophotometric ATPase assays. The team presents a poster on their work, then each student individually writes a report in the style of a short paper. The student grade is based on three assessed pieces: the lab book (20%), poster presentation (10%, graded as a team), and the report (70%). This course is compulsory for year 3 of our MSci Biochemistry programme, and counts for 20 credit points (out of 120 for the year). The course has been running since 2017 with an intake of 20-30 students per year, all of whom have passed the course.