Baltimore SCIART: A Fully Virtual Undergraduate Research Experience at the Interface of Computational Chemistry and Art

Abstract

From its inception in 2016 through 2019, the Baltimore SCIART Consortium offered an annual 10-week interdisciplinary summer research program for undergraduate students. Each year, the program mentored approximately 10 students, many from primarily undergraduate institutions including minority serving institutions and historically black colleges and universities. Throughout the sessions, the students were exposed to the career paths of art conservation and art conservation science as they worked in the laboratories of scientists, engineers, art conservators, and art conservation scientists at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, Johns Hopkins University, and the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. Preparations for the 2020 program were underway when the COVID-19 pandemic shifted the undergraduate research paradigm to a virtual experience. An in-person, laboratory-based program was no longer an option, and this challenged the SCIART team to investigate novel ways to offer a rigorous, engaging undergraduate research program in a fully virtual setting. The result was an intensive, three-week pilot program in which four SCIART students learned about and successfully applied open-source periodic density functional theory software packages to explore the interactions between small molecule adsorbates and mineral-based surfaces relevant to art conservation. This case study exemplifies how educators and research leaders were able to strategically pivot and provide an adapted curriculum for a unique, interdisciplinary, and fully virtual undergraduate research experience. The implication is a potential (scalable) model for culturally engaging research opportunities for historically underrepresented students in STEM, both during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.