Author(s):
Chitra Solomonson, Green River College, Auburn, WA 98092
Need: 58% of Washington state undergraduate students are enrolled in community colleges. Of these students, 37% of STEM majors identify themselves as belonging to groups underrepresented in STEM. Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) are a well-documented high-impact practice that has the potential to increase the retention and transfer of underrepresented students in STEM. CUREs have been defined in many ways but, in essence, are used to teach research skills to students within the context of regular coursework. Many STEM faculty members within Washington State’s 34 community and technical colleges are developing and implementing CUREs that are matched to the disciplinary fields and curriculum of associated courses. All 34 of these colleges are also adopting the Guided Pathways model to increase students’ retention and successful transfer to four-year universities or direct entry into the workforce. Despite these measures, none of the colleges have institutional plans to implement and sustain CUREs on a broad scale.
The goal of the Cascadia CURE Conference (C3) was to convene teams of STEM administrators and faculty from ten Washington State community colleges to create long-term plans to institutionalize the widespread practice of CUREs in a manner tailored to their colleges’ assets, employees, students, and cultures consistent with their applications of the Guided Pathways model and aligned with their institution-wide strategic plans.
The conference was facilitated by Jim Hewlett of the Community College Undergraduate Research Initiative (CCURI NSF DUE #1524353), an effort that has to date worked with 142 colleges to develop and institutionalize CUREs. CCURI’s research has identified seven characteristics associated with colleges that have successfully embedded CUREs within their STEM academic cultures.
Guiding Questions: “Which of these seven characteristics are self-identified by the ten Washington community colleges? How can these colleges move from a state of ‘no research’ to a state of ‘research as the norm’?
Outcomes:
Outcome 1: At the conference, each team 1) evaluated their college’s capacity for institutionalization of CUREs, based on CCURI’s list of characteristics and other research findings; and 2) wrote drafts of long-term plans for institutionalizing CUREs at scale, using the seven characteristics identified by CCURI.
Outcome 2: The colleges will repeat the survey after a year (May 2024) to evaluate their progress, as well as describe lessons learned that may be useful for other colleges seeking to expand the use of CUREs.
Broader Impact: GRC belongs to an NSF-funded (DUE #2121486, #2336652) statewide network of community and technical colleges (CTCs), the Washington Consortium for Undergraduate Research and Equity (WA-CURE). WA-CURE is investigating how to systematically expand and sustain the use of CUREs in undergraduate STEM courses by embedding the instructional practice of undergraduate research within each CTC’s academic culture. Cascadia CURE Conference (C3) will accelerate the adoption of CUREs within STEM courses at GRC and nine other CTCs within the WA-CURE network.
In addition, this study will help to clarify the applicability of CCURI’s research as a planning and decision-making tool.
Coauthors
Chitra Solomonson, Green River College, Auburn, WA 98092
