Is Community Relevance Enough? Civic and Science Identity Impact of Microbiology CUREs Focused on Community Environmental Justice.

Sarah J Adkins-Jablonsky,Qutia Roberts,J Jeffrey Morris,Brad C Bennett,Rob Akscyn

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2020.578520

Abstract

Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) often involve a component where the outcomes of student research are broadly relevant to outside stakeholders. We wanted to see if building courses around an environmental justice issue relevant to the local community would impact students’ sense of civic engagement and appreciation of the relevance of scientific research to the community. In this quasi-experimental study, we assessed civic engagement and scientific identity gains (N = 98) using pre- and post-semester surveys and open-ended interview responses in three different CUREs taught simultaneously at three different universities. All three CURES were focused on an environmental heavy metal pollution issue predominantly affecting African–Americans in Birmingham, Alabama. While we found increases in students’ sense of science efficacy and identity, our team was unable to detect meaningful changes in civic engagement levels, all of which were initially quite high. However, interviews suggested that students were motivated to do well in their research because the project was of interest to outside stakeholders. Our observations suggest that rather than directly influencing students’ civic engagement, the “broadly relevant” component of our CUREs engaged their pre-existing high levels of engagement to increase their engagement with the material, possibly influencing gains in science efficacy and science identity. Our observations are consistent with broader community relevance being an important component of CURE success, but do not support our initial hypothesis that CURE participation would influence students’ attitudes toward the civic importance of science.

Highlights

Course-based undergraduate research experiences are becoming increasingly popular in higher education in the United States for their ability to engage university students in authentic research in the context of a course (AAAS, 2009)
University 1 (U1) students reported higher agreement to the CARS statement “Learning science helps me understand about the environment” than University 3 (U3) students, and were more likely to agree with the Persistence in the Sciences (PITS) statements “I have come to think of myself as a ‘scientist”’ and the CARS statement “Knowledge of science will help me protect the environment” than students at either University 2 (U2) or U3 (Figure 1)
Female students at U1 were more likely than female students at the other universities to agree with belonging to a community of scientists (PITS SI-1), and female students at both U1 and U2 were more likely than female students at U3 to agree with thinking of themselves like scientists (PITS SI-3)

Summary

Introduction

Course-based undergraduate research experiences (or CUREs) are becoming increasingly popular in higher education in the United States for their ability to engage university students in authentic research in the context of a course (AAAS, 2009). Broad Relevance in Three CUREs experiments; and (5) engage with a “broadly relevant” project (Auchincloss et al, 2014). In the meeting report of CUREnet, an online CURE repository, the authors posit “CUREs involve students in work that fits into a broader scientific endeavor that has meaning beyond the particular course context” (Auchincloss et al, 2014). Put another way, broad relevance indicates the presence of, or need for, an outside stakeholder

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Conclusion