Celebrating and Supporting
Course-based Research Experiences
at Hope
One of the goals of Hope's current HHMI program is to facilitate creation of more opportunities for students to engage in
research experiences. One mechanism for engaging many students is through course-based research experiences (CREs).
We’ve got many examples of CREs on our campus and seven
of those models were shared with our campus community on
November 24th, 2014. If you didn’t make it to this presentation, you can review abstracts from the CREs in this brochure
or walk around Schaap Science Center and VanderWerf Hall to
check out the complete posters.
The HHMI steering committee will be awarding at least two
complete course development projects, each with a maximum
award of $10,000. Note, the deadline for submitting a course
development project proposal is February 16th, 2015. Email
your proposal to hhmi@hope.edu.
In addition, the HHMI program will support the creation of a
discussion group for existing CRE developers and faculty interested in learning more. This lunch-discussion group will share
ideas and best practices with an eye towards improving the
courses (both for students and faculty). In addition, the Hope
HHMI assessment team will participate to help the group assess
their courses and disseminate their course
models, if they would like.
If you are interested in receiving e-mail
updates about this group, please let us
know (hhmi@hope.edu).
Biology: Ginny McDonough and Greg Fraley.
Poster location: VanderWerf, near 204
In Fall 2013, the Biology Department embarked on an exciting curriculum reform that reduced the three-semester introductory ibiology sequence down to two semesters. The lab portion of the class, the focus of
this poster, was revamped to combine elements of “traditional” biology
lab along with innovative research experiences. The lab course was
broken down into six modules, with each module focused on a different
biological area; Ecology, Plant and Animal Organismal Biology, Molecular Genetics, Cell Biology and Evolution.
Engineering: Katherine Polasek and Susan Ipri Brown.
Poster location: VanderWerf, near 204
Attracting and maintaining women in engineering is a problem spanning
from early childhood to mid-career women. Best practices indicate that
the most successful programs involve providing these women students
with female mentors and role models, creating a sense of community in
the profession and providing early exposure to real-life applications.
To help encourage and engage our students, we created a program focusing on incoming freshmen female students with an interest in engineering. Interventions were performed before their arrival and throughout their first year. This included sending welcome letters after acceptance to Hope, creating a cohort of freshmen women engineers and
providing mentoring with an older student in the program. During the
school year, a design project was integrated into the required ENGS 100
course to further engage the students with a real-world engineering
problem.. Data are being collected to quantify retention and interest
among these students.
Mathematics: Brian Yurk and Paul Pearson.
Poster location: VanderWerf, near 204
Statistics and the Great Lakes is a course-based undergraduate research
experience for first-year students. This research-infused statistics and
first-year seminar course is designed to stimulate student interested in
research. During a three-day field research experience on Lake Michigan’s sand dunes, students collect data on Pitcher’s thistle, a threatened
plant. They analyze this data, as well as other real Great Lakes data,
using the statistical methods they learn during the semester. The readings for the course focus on ecological issues facing the Great Lakes and
highlight the importance of research, public policy and personal involvement.
Microbiology: Aaron Best.
Poster location: Schaap, near 3024
The course is a full redesign of an existing general microbiology laboratory for undergraduate biology majors, the laboratory component of
BIOL 301 General Microbiology. Typically, junior and senior level
students take the course, though the student population may begin to
include sophomores as the new biology core curriculum is implemented. The redesign will incorporate an authentic research project that
spans the entirety of the semester. The research will focus on characterizing microbial populations of fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) in the
Macatawa Watershed; the levels of FIB are used by local, state and federal agencies to make decisions about the safety and accessibility of
recreational waters. The research will give students the opportunity to
consider open scientific questions with relevance to the local community, learn standard microbiological concepts and techniques recommended by the American Society of Microbiology (ASM) guidelines for undergraduate microbiology courses, and introduce modern microbial genomics and comparative analyses into the course.
Psychology: Mary Inman and Lorna Jarvis.
Poster location: Schaap, near 1019
We have redesigned the 1-credit Introduction to Psychology Projects
course to be an online course. The course introduces students to research in social sciences in particular in psychology. The entire course
involves engagement with research. Three main research projects are
conducted, an observation project, a survey/correlational research project, and an experiment. Students engage in developing hypotheses,
operational definitions of variables, data collection, data analysis interpretation, and writing research reports. We would like to redesign all
these projects so that they can be done on line. The course will serve
many students (potentially as many as 50-60 per year) who come to
Hope College with psychology AP credit but need the hands-on quantitative research experience required in the General Education program
and in the Psychology major. It will also serve students who transfer in
3 credits of introduction to psychology course taken at other institutions. The course will be taught in the summer as an online course.
Members of the psychology department will rotate teaching it. Teaching
this course on line during the summer allows members of the psychology department to teach this course without having to teach an overload
during the academic year. The course has been taught during the academic year for the past 5 years by three faculty members as an overload. This model is no longer sustainable. Thus, the department supports the idea of re-designing this course as an online summer course.
Biology and Chemistry: Maria Hledin and Kathy Winnett-Murray.
Poster location: Schaap, near 2023
We modified an existing lab investingating the antibiotic properties of
spices that hs been taught for several years by Dr. Maria BurnatowskaHledin in her GEMS 161 course: “Biotechnology and You”. Specifically,
we aimed to enhance the research-based experience students in this lab
through:
 The addition of background on space attributes, so that students
would be equipped to develop informed working hypotheses
 Incorporation of information about the evolution of antibiotic resistance
 Inclusion of a Group Research Proposal, including feedback from the
instructor prior to starting experiments
 Enhancement of the statistical analysis of results, which required
building more replication into the experimental design
 Development of debate topics as part of the evaluation of student
learning.
By incorporating more research-based elements, and enhancing the interdisciplinary aspects of the lab, we also aimed to increase its exportability
to other classes at Hope, and to other undergraduate institutions.
Chemistry: Jason Gillmore and Traci Smith.
Poster location: Schaap, near 3124
Our 6 hour/week two semester organic chemistry laboratory sequence has
long included a half semester three step independent synthesis project at
the end of the second semester course. Over the past two decades this has
transitioned from a mandatory, closely controlled suite of projects tied to a
central organic 'theme' that varied from year to year, to an elective and
increasingly independent set of projects tied to a wide variety of ongoing
faculty research programs across chemistry and beyond. This has allowed
faculty to leverage this course to advance their research as well as students' learning, and has drawn targets from most of the faculty in the
chemistry department and some from other STEM disciplines. Students
gain exposure to and connection with authentic faculty research, providing
some a springboard to future research engagement, and have the satisfaction of contributing to ongoing work rather than to a waste container. Students begin with a literature search workshop, select a target, and develop
a synthetic plan. They craft a research proposal including a list of chemicals, hazards, and equipment. The necessary reagents and equipment are
gathered over Spring Break. In the final five weeks of the semester, students execute the multistep synthesis with complete purification and characterization of intermediates, and prepare a comprehensive written report. Our anecdotal experiences, breadth of targets, student outcomes, and
CURE survey data will be presented.