Kate Cammack, CfT Co-Director
The Faculty Fellows for Mentored Research and Creative Work recently hosted an informative session on Course-Embedded Research Experiences (CUREs). Three faculty from different divisions/disciplines – Kati Curts (Religious Studies), Jennifer Matthews (Theater), and Katie McGhee (Biology) – led an engaging conversation on CUREs; you can find their slide deck here.
A few questions that were considered at their CfT event:
What is undergraduate “research”? What might fall under that umbrella?
- It can be defined broad as a “mentored investigation or creative inquiry conducted by undergraduates that seeks to make a scholarly or artistic contribution to knowledge” (Council on Undergraduate Research)
- How do we define “knowledge”? Must it be unique? Is the process of research sufficient?
What is a CURE? How does it differ from related, high-impact practices?
- A CURE “integrates undergraduate teaching and research through authentic research opportunities in which students contribute to knowledge that is new to the discipline” (CUR Characteristics of Excellence in Undergraduate Research 2.0)
What are the benefits? Challenges?
What can I try, if I’m not quite ready to commit?
What resources do you recommend, so that I can learn more?
- Your colleagues!
- If you’d like help identifying examples of CUREs within your subdiscipline, please email any of the Faculty Fellows or me (CfT co-director)
- If you’re potentially interested in exploring a faculty learning community (FLC) focused on CUREs, the CfT would be happy to help coordinate – email Kate at kmcammac@sewanee.edu
- Council on Undergraduate Research
- here are a few of their resources & articles on CURE
- General or disciplinary search engine, using CURE as a search term
- As a general example, I used Google (not Scholar) to find a helpful, orienting article specific to my discipline (neuroscience)
- My favorite disciplinary search engine turned up 100s of results (and ideas!)
The Faculty Fellows program is coordinated by the Office of Undergraduate Research & Scholarship (co-directed by Elise Kikis and Ross Sowell) and supported by a McCrickard Faculty Development Grant.