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Improving Undergraduate Student Engagement In Stem Through Bioinformatics Research, Michele C. Morris

Dissertations

A novel intervention to introduce undergraduate students to bioinformatics, provide authentic research opportunities, and support student retention in science majors and careers is presented in the Characterizing Our DNA Exceptions (CODE) project. The need to increase the number of qualified STEM graduates, particularly in the fields of bioinformatics and computational research, was the impetus for this project that leads students down the path of scientific discovery as they characterize genomic variants of uncertain significance (VUS). This study sought to examine if student participation in a CODE research project would increase their bioinformatics awareness, interest, comfort, and knowledge, as well as …