Elements of a CURE

CURENet has defined key features of a CURE (Course based Undergraduate Research Experiences)

“ CUREs offer opportunities for students to make discoveries that are of interest to stakeholders outside the classroom (e.g., the broader scientific community).

  • Students' work is iterative, meaning that students must trouble-shoot, problem-solve, and repeat aspects of their work for the research to progress.

  • CUREs offer opportunities for students to communicate their research results to those stakeholders.

  • Just like in a faculty member's research group, the research in a CURE progresses as students work. This means that new research questions and directions are generated each term and the CURE is unlikely to look the same from year to year.

  • Students may engage in a range of science practices such as collecting and analyzing data, building and defending arguments, and collaborating with one another and more experienced scientists. The work that students do in a CURE must build off and have the potential to contribute to a larger body of knowledge in the discipline.”

    What is an MCC CURE?

  • MCC CUREs engage students in authentic research experiences in a regularly scheduled laboratory class. They are focused on the enzyme Malate Dehydrogenase, and can be taught from first year to senior year in either a full semester version or a modular format (5-6 weeks) within a semester. MCC CUREs, in addition to conforming with the CURENet definition above, share nine common elements of Research, allowing for OUR pedagogical research efforts to determine key elements of research that contribute to desired student outcomes in a CURE.

  • i) Relevance, ii) Scientific Background, iii) Hypothesis Development, iv) Proposal, v)Experiments, Teamwork, Collaboration, vi)Reproducibility, vii) Data Analysis & Drawing Evidence Based Conclusion and viii) Presentation, and ix) Peer Review.