RCN-UBE: Design to Data Network: expanding a faculty community of practice to broaden and diversify participation in undergraduate research

Within the last year the power of current biology was made strikingly apparent, with success of an entirely novel vaccine technology to halt the crippling COVID pandemic.

It is clear that we are now living through an age of profound biological advancement and that a large, diverse, skilled biology-oriented workforce is needed now more than ever.

Experiencing the process of science first-hand can mean the difference between an undergraduate STEM student completing their degree or dropping out.

Integrating undergraduate research experiences (UREs), into classes makes it possible for many more students to glean these benefits.

However, it is often prohibitively difficult for faculty to develop a suitable research project that is both relevant to the scientific community and simultaneously meets their curricular needs.

The Design to Data network aims to make it as easy as possible for faculty to integrate research into their cell, molecular, genetics, biotechnology, and biochemistry courses, and particularly at institutions with very diverse student bodies.

The research project engages a workflow of experiments that are highly representative of cutting-edge techniques common to the biotechnology industry and students who participate in these classes will gain skills and knowledge that increase competitiveness as STEM workforce members or graduate school applicants.

Further, this project will examine the faculty network member experience to answer the question as to what essential programmatic and professional development components are necessary to expand such networks across the US.

In elucidating these best practices, the network will grow sustainably for years beyond the funding period and will share recommendations for program organizers, who seek to integrate other research projects into undergraduate classes to realize a future where all undergraduates experience research first-hand as part of their education. <br/><br/>The mission of the Design to Data network is to make integrating research into biology courses readily accessible for faculty from institutions with limited research-related resources.

To accomplish this the network will target known barriers in this space through, strategically connecting with established networks thereby creating networks within networks, offering professional development through different modalities and structuring mentorship opportunities, and ensuring facile and economic feasibility by providing essential lab supplies for implementation during the funding period.

The expected outcome is participating faculty members will successfully integrate the Design to Data modules into their classes and that students will complete defined research milestones: building the mutant plasmid library and contributing enzyme functionality data to the project’s database, which are key performative indicators that students have successfully gained the requisite knowledge and skills.

Further, faculty perceptions regarding motivation and challenges will provide insightful, and more nuanced explanatory understanding of the network outcomes.

The project will disseminate these findings to enable others in the undergraduate biology community to streamline the UREs they develop to serve thousands of future students, many of whom come from backgrounds historically excluded from STEM.<br/><br/>This project is being jointly funded by the Directorate for Biological Sciences, Division of Biological Infrastructure, and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources, Division of Undergraduate Education as part of their efforts to address the challenges posed in Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action (http://visionandchange/finalreport/).<br/><br/>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.