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University of Central Florida

Florida Statewide Symposium: Best Practices in Undergraduate Research

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All Nuts And No Bolts: The Evolution Of Undergraduate Research At A Small State School, James Hawker Oct 2019

All Nuts And No Bolts: The Evolution Of Undergraduate Research At A Small State School, James Hawker

Florida Statewide Symposium: Best Practices in Undergraduate Research

In fall of 2017, students first started doing research with their biology instructor, and just a few terms later, two students have earned Portz Interdisciplinary Fellowships. In some ways, the program is going well with students participating in high numbers, but organizers still have questions about the “nuts and bolts” of establishing the program within the institution. Enthusiasm is high! However, key metrics are not being tracked and the workload needs to be distributed more evenly. The organizers will be talking with the audience about different ways to integrate UGR into the institution.


Seminole State College Cure Research Program: From The Classroom To Collaboration, Maya Patrice Byfield Phd Oct 2019

Seminole State College Cure Research Program: From The Classroom To Collaboration, Maya Patrice Byfield Phd

Florida Statewide Symposium: Best Practices in Undergraduate Research

It is believed that if students are taught inductively in their first 2 years, it could induce many of them to seek research experiences later in their academic careers. To do this, we initiated an effort to promote engagement in research topics and faculty development. First, collaboration between one faculty member at SSC and a Principal Investigator at the Sanford-Burnham Institute was developed. This collaboration resulted in the creation of several internships at the Institute for students in the newly developed STEM research class. Second, to increase student engagement, the biology department developed a research focused colloquium series. Each fall …


A Cohort-Based Program To Help Students Prepare A Conference Research Presentation, Alanna Lecher Oct 2018

A Cohort-Based Program To Help Students Prepare A Conference Research Presentation, Alanna Lecher

Florida Statewide Symposium: Best Practices in Undergraduate Research

Students move through many first time experiences when navigating their undergraduate and graduate education. Such experiences include the first time students submit an article to a peer-reviewed scientific journal, attend a conference, and conduct fieldwork. The cohort model has been shown to be effective in increasing success in undergraduate education, and it can be adapted to helping students succeed in these novel experiences as well. This presentation will explore one program where the cohort model was implemented to aid undergraduate students preparing their first conference presentation on a scientific research project. Program structure and implementation will be described.


Making Scholarly Activity Available To The Masses: The Scaffolding Of Scholarship Throughout The Undergraduate Curriculum, Michael Savarese, Trent R. Brown, Carolyn Culbertson, Anna Carlin Oct 2016

Making Scholarly Activity Available To The Masses: The Scaffolding Of Scholarship Throughout The Undergraduate Curriculum, Michael Savarese, Trent R. Brown, Carolyn Culbertson, Anna Carlin

Florida Statewide Symposium: Best Practices in Undergraduate Research

Florida Gulf Coast University’s Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) focuses on improving student critical thinking, information literacy, and written communication. Rather than developing these skills through traditional methods (e.g., through senior-level, independent research), these learning outcomes are practiced through scholarly experiences. Traditional undergraduate scholarship manifests itself through terminal, senior capstone or research experiences. These, because of the economy of scale, typically reach a minority of students, often just honors students or those approached by faculty mentors. At FGCU, however, scholarly experiences are a part of the curriculum throughout the program of study, and scaffolded to build greater depth and sophistication. Presented …


Strengthening Students’ Information Literacy Skills As They Develop Original Research Proposals In A Scientific Process Course, Kimberly A. Reycraft, Nora E. Demers Oct 2016

Strengthening Students’ Information Literacy Skills As They Develop Original Research Proposals In A Scientific Process Course, Kimberly A. Reycraft, Nora E. Demers

Florida Statewide Symposium: Best Practices in Undergraduate Research

Scientific Process is a required course for all undergraduate science majors at FGCU. In this course, students develop original research proposals on topics of their interest. Information literacy skills are critical as students must be able to use multiple sources of information to develop their proposals. Biology and library faculty have collaborated to add instruction and assignments addressing research question development, search strategy, citation management, and more. Our goal is to improve students’ information literacy skills as well as the quality and quantity of citations in their final proposals. We will present on this initiative and our preliminary assessment results.