Catalyst Project: Infusion of Data Expertise into Undergraduate Biology Curriculum

Catalyst Projects provide support for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) to work towards establishing research capacity of faculty to strengthen science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) undergraduate education and research. It is expected that the award will further the faculty member's research capability, improve research and teaching at the institution, and involve undergraduate students in research experiences.

Albany State University intends to infuse data science and computational analyses into its biology curriculum. The proposed curricular enhancements aim to incorporate teaching and learning strategies that support student’s ability to understand and interpret globally accessible biological data, which has the potential to increase student preparedness for STEM graduate programs or the workforce.

This project adapts a unique curriculum framework for promoting Data Expertise in the Undergraduate Biology Curriculum (DEUBiC). The central hypothesis is that students with data expertise are better prepared and are qualified for the globally competitive computational science-intensive workforce, as developed through strategic evidence-based teaching and learning.

The team at Albany State University will infuse selected existing courses with content for honing data expertise as well as design and offer new upper-level courses: Biological Instrumentation Technology, Advanced Computing Resources in Biology, and Computational Genomics. Students will engage in data intensive research both as course-based research projects, and as mentored senior research projects.

Through the project-based experiences, students will transfer learning from new and infused courses to pose research questions, develop testable hypotheses and design appropriate experiments to test predictions. The assessment of scientific literacy, quantitative literacy, and strategic learning approach, if successful, will contribute a transferable blueprint that could be applied to undergraduate STEM education, with potential for impact among underserved communities, minorities and women.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.