Undergraduate Research
as a High Impact Practice
Queensborough Community College (QCC)’s
Model for Integrating Research Into the Curriculum
Dr. Maria Mercedes Franco
Coordinator for Undergraduate Research
& Associate Professor, Mathematics
CCRI Winter Workshop - January 7, 2015
About Queensborough (QCC)

Member institution of the City University of New York (CUNY) –the
largest urban, public university system in the USA (11 senior colleges, 7
community colleges, 1 honors college, 4 graduate & professional schools. Founded in
1847, the university now enrolls over 270,000 undergraduate students).

Located in one of the most diverse counties of the nation, Queens.
Only 18% of our students commute from outside this borough.

QCC students come from 143 countries, and nearly 44% of them
speak a language other than English at home.

They speak 84 different languages, 26% were born outside the USA.
About Queensborough (QCC)

Over 16,000 students:
30% Hispanic
25% Asian or Pacific Islander
25% Black
19% White
1% American Indian or Native Alaskan

Among all associate degree seeking students the average age is 23.2
years (only 21% of our degree students 25 or older), 53% are female.

Among first-time freshmen: average age is 19.5 years, 50% are
female.

Certificate students are primarily female and significantly older than
associate degree seeking students.
About Queensborough (QCC)

Over 70% of the incoming freshmen require at least one remedial
course and 64% of all first-time full-time freshmen and 48% of all
degree students receive some form of financial aid. Tuition for 2013-2014
was $4,200.

The four-year graduation rate for the Fall 2009 first-time, full-time
freshman cohort was 23.5 % -the highest in the last decade.

The six-year graduation rate for the Fall 2007 first-time, full-time
freshman cohort was 28.7%.

QCC Fact Book 2013-2014
About Queensborough (QCC)

Committed equally to open-admission access and to academic
excellence, QCC supports student learning in innovative ways. This
commitment has led, over the years, to the creation of several
Academies and to the integration of seven High Impact Practices
(HIPs) into the fabric of the college.

The Academies: STEM, Liberal Arts, Visual and Performing Arts,
Health Related Sciences, and Business.

Intrusive Advisement (Freshman Coordinators).
High Impact Practices (HIPs)

HIPs are teaching and learning practices proven to be beneficial to
college students from all backgrounds, but more so to students from
historically underserved populations (Kuh, 2008).

Kuh identified ten HIPs. Seven of those have been implemented
and institutionalized at QCC:

Writing Intensive Courses (WI), Learning Communities (LC),
Academic Service Learning (SL), Common Intellectual
Experience, Collaborative Assignments and Projects,
Global/Diversity Learning (GDL) & Undergraduate Research
(UR).
UR as a HIP
“The goal is to involve students with actively
contested questions, empirical observation, cuttingedge technologies, and the sense of excitement that
comes from working to answer important questions.”

High-Impact Educational Practices: What They Are, Who Has Access to Them, and Why
They Matter, by George D. Kuh (AAC&U, 2008) as reported in
https://www.aacu.org/leap/hip.cfm

UR as a HIP
Student, process centered Outcome, product

centered
Student initiated  Faculty initiated

All students  Honors students

Curriculum based  Co-curricular

“Making Explicit the Implicit: Defining Undergraduate Research” by M. Beckman & N. Hensel

UR as a HIP
Collaborative  Individual

Original to student  Original to discipline

Multi-or interdisciplinary  Discipline based

Campus/community audience  Professional audience

“Making Explicit the Implicit: Defining Undergraduate Research” by M. Beckman & N. Hensel

History of UR at QCC

There is a strong history of involving undergraduate students in
research:

Research courses

Independent Studies courses

Research projects assigned as Honors Contracts to students in
a regular class

Paid or unpaid research internships

Grant-funded (summer) research programs
History of UR at QCC

The college has received numerous grants to support UR, including an
NIH Bridges to the Baccalaureate program, the first NSF REU
awarded to a community college for physics research and several DOE
MSEIP grants. All in all Queensborough has received over 3.4 million
dollars to engage undergraduates in quality peer-reviewed science
research and another 1.6 million to indirectly support such efforts.

This commitment to undergraduate research has resulted in numerous
publications and presentation at national conferences, as well as
student awards. Over 100 students participate in UR each year
throughout the various departments at the college.

QCC annual Report 2013
Institutionalizing UR as a HIP at QCC




In the Fall of 2013, the college decided to increase and diversify the
opportunities for undergraduates to participate in meaningful
research by institutionalizing UR as a HIP. The time was right:
IOM “Future of Nursing Report: Leading change, advancing
health” (2011).
Report to the President “Engage to Excel” (Olson and Riordan,
2012).
CUNY’s “Integrating Research into the Curriculum” initiative, led
by Dr. Avrom Caplan, Associate University Dean for Research.
Institutionalizing UR as a HIP at
QCC

A Faculty Inquiry Group, now known as the “UR Team”, was
formed:

Dr. Cheryl Bluestone, Social Sciences (Coord. UR in Fall
2013)

Dr. Georgina Colalillo, Nursing

Dr. Nidhi Gadura, Biological Sci. & Geology

Dr. Jun H. Shin, Chemistry

Dr. Mercedes Franco, Mathematics & CS
Institutionalizing UR as a HIP at
QCC

The UR Team
• Developed student learning outcomes for UR
• Developed a professional development plan to enable faculty to
teach courses that utilize research as a teaching & learning strategy
(“research intensive” course: a research component or project is
embedded into a regular course)
• Designed an evaluation plan for UR at the college (to be
implemented in 2015-2017)
Student learning outcomes for UR
 LO1 - (Collect and Analyze data) Students will be able to follow
protocol in order to gather appropriate data & evaluate and analyze
data accurately to provide a solution to a problem and complete a
project
 LO2 - (Create a product) Students will present the data in an
appropriate format (particularly: correctly make and label relevant
figures, tables, or graphs) to submit an analytical product to
support/refute different points of view on a topic
 LO3 - (Present product) Students will accurately present his/her
product at an appropriate venue. The venue may be a class
meeting, a club, a departmental conference, a QCC conference or
any regional or national conference
Professional Development Plan for UR
For faculty across HIPs, offered by CETL:

1. Backward Course Design

2. Reflection

For UR faculty, offered by UR Team:

3. Designing a research intensive course:

Our premise: faculty members are well equipped to conduct research in their
disciplines. FIG assists in developing and embedding research into a regular class
in a manner that is pedagogically sound & executable within the timeframe of a

semester.
Professional Development Plan for UR
 Stipends recognize time and effort spent on PD activities
 UR Team members mentor UR recruits after workshop
 Blackboard site serves as repository of course design documents,
reading materials, templates
 UR Team members review and approve UR course designs
First Cohort of UR Faculty
 Spring 2014:

Dr. Nidhi Gadura – BI 356 Principles of Genetics

Dr. Areti Tsimounis – BI 421Human Physiology Lab

Dr. Mercedes Franco – MA 336 Computer Assisted Statistics

Dr. Rommel Robertson – PSYC 240 Social Psychology
First Cohort of UR Faculty
 Fall 2014:

Dr. Monica Trujillo – BI 461 General Microbiology

Dr. Lakersha Smith – PSYC 230 Abnormal Psychology

Drs. Georgina Colalillo, Regina Cardaci & Barbara BlakeCampbell – NU 204 Nursing and Societal Forces
MA 336 Computer Assisted Statistics
 Intro to probability & statistics for non-majors (class size: 24).
 Mandatory Research “Examining Human Rights with the
Lens of Statistics” aligns with other HIPs: Common Read, SL
and WI.
 Students work in groups; collect quantitative data about a
human right issue of their choice; design and conduct
correlational analysis with the data (Hypothesis testing).
 Students present to a general audience (High School & QCC
students, faculty, staff) and write an statistical analysis report.
CH 115 Introduction to Nanoscience
• Students will review the literature on a nanoparticle of choice. They will
note the applications of this nanoparticle, whether composites have been
synthesized with carbon nanotubes and what synthesis procedures have been
reported.
• They will then propose experimental procedures to synthesize either 1) a
novel carbon nanotube- nanoparticle composite utilizing a previously
reported method or 2) a reported carbon nanotube-nanoparticle composite
utilizing an unreported method. They must present a justification of their
choice, which could be related to using better environmental and health
friendly procedures.
• They will submit an abstract (400-500 words) at the end of the semester and
do a presentation in class and at the Honors Conference. Aligned with WI.
CH 106 Chemistry and the Arts
•
Students will characterize fabrics, pigments, and other
materials used by the Queensborough Community College
Theater Department using methods and instrumentation of
analytical chemistry, such as light microscopy, scanningelectron microscopy, elemental analysis, and spectroscopy.
•
Product: 5–8 page laboratory report, partly assembled from inclass scaffolding assignments
•
Presentation: 15-minute oral presentation with slides suitable
for a mixed audience of high-school and college students,
faculty, and staff at the QCC Honors Conference.
•
Aligned with SL.
CS 203 Algorithmic Problem Solving II

Student groups will find numerical problems in their science
courses including mathematics and develop the software to solve
their problems.

Product: 200-300 lines of code, a design report.

Presentation: Each research group will deliver a 10-15 min.
presentation in the classroom.
PSYC 240 Social Psychology

Students will work on groups. Each group will be given access to a
large data set file containing data on a wide variety of social and
psychological factors. Each group will identify four variables that
they would be interested in designing a set of research questions to
further explore and investigate. Groups will generate meaninful and
plausible hypothesis about the perceived relationship among the
variables. These hypotheses will serve as the focus of each group’s
research project.

Students will summarize their work on a paper and will deliver a
PPT presentation.
PSYC 230 Abnormal Psychology

In an effort to strengthen students’ understanding of psychological
research design, each student will conduct a project titled
“Psychology in Motion (PIM). PIM is a semester long project
which endeavors to introduce students to the research planning
process. At the end of the semester each student will have a
structured outline of intended research.
BI 356 Principles of Genetics
 Join CSHL DNA Barcoding Project (Honors)
 Students work in teams of 3 to come up with a testable hypothesis.
 Students extract Genomic DNA, PCR amplify barcoding region,
send out for sequencing, use DNA Subway to analyze the
sequence and identify species, make phylogenetic trees to
understand evolutionary relationships
 Make a presentation at the end of the semester.
NU 204 Nursing and Societal Forces
Students will frame a researchable question and gather evidence to
answer the question.

•Collect quantitative data on the teen pregnancy rates in NYC by zip
code utilizing appropriate resources.
•Research and review the literature on teen pregnancy reduction
interventions.
•Hypothesize (question) possible causes for persistence of problem
despite intervention.
•utilize the PICOT framework to conduct evidence-based research
•Develop a poster presentation and research paper (WI, SL, GDL).
Assessment Plan for UR
 Self-reported benefits collected from UR students via
(pre & post) surveys.
 Assessment of student work (papers and oral
presentations) using a rubric developed by the UR. The
rubric recognizes 5 levels of performance (0 through 4;
1 is not passing) for each one of the UR LO.

In addition, the college will assess impact of UR on
retention and graduation rates, enrollment in STEM
programs, and student satisfaction across gender, race
and at-risk factors.
Expected outcomes….
LONG TERM GOALS:
•Increased number of faculty engaged in research.
•Increased number of courses with UR component built in.
•Increased number of students engaged in research.
•Increased number of student presentations at conferences.
•Increased retention rates and transfer rates to higher education
degrees.
Thank you!
Mfranco@qcc.cuny.edu

Acknowledgements:

Dr. Paul Marchese, Interim VP of Academic Affairs, QCC

Dr. Jane Hindman, Director of The Center for Excellence in Teaching and
Learning (CETL), QCC

Dr. Avrom Caplan, University Associate Dean for Research, CUNY

