Biophysics in Order: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Undergraduate Student Engagement in Research

Abstract

There is a growing recognition among university educators that early exposure to research facilitates student engagement, reinforces learned material, and provides critical training that is otherwise not provided in a traditional class setting. Unfortunately, by the nature of graduate education, undergraduates are rarely afforded opportunities to formally interact with university researchers. The ORDER (On Recent Discoveries by Emory Researchers) program is taught by graduate students and postdoctoral researchers under the guidance of faculty and aims to provide an interdisciplinary, research-based course to undergraduate freshmen and upperclassmen. During the freshmen seminar course, students propose a research question and actively conduct experiments to address their hypotheses. The capstone of the course is a research report and formal presentation of their results, specifically intended for a broad audience. The course was adapted for upperclassmen to focus on students creating and presenting a research proposal which they can use to guide the transition after their baccalaureate education.Here, we discuss the integration of a single-molecule biophysics module into the ORDER curriculum taught in the 2012-2013 academic year at Emory University. “iSearch: Illuminating Identity” was a course designed by teacher-scholars from disciplines ranging from Neuroscience and Physics to Psychology and Spanish. Each teacher-scholar exposed undergraduate students to his/her specific research pursuits and mentored undergraduate students through the research process. The undergraduate students came from a broad assortment of academic programs offered at the university. Further, we present the layout of the course, the active methods used to engage students, the lessons learned from collaboratively teaching a research-based course, and the educational benefits for the teacher-scholars. In particular, we detail the single-molecule biophysics module and present pre- and post-survey results from students probing their interest and understanding of the biophysics research field.