A course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) is a teaching and learning practice that allows students, often working in teams, to engage in authentic and novel research in the form of a course. We offer 4th year CURE courses that span 4-months, during which student teams work through a research cycle shown below. A broad range of projects have been developed by students in the course that span the fields of molecular biology, biochemistry, and microbiology. Students have employed a wide range of microbiology and molecular biology techniques including standard PCR, quantitative PCR, Gibson’s cloning, flow cytometry, and Next Generation Sequencing. The student research done in these CURE courses are documented in an undergraduate research journal UJEMI to create an ongoing consortium of knowledge built by students over years. As of 2019, UJEMI had published 493 original research articles solely authored by undergraduate students. Individual articles investigating common research questions can be clustered into ongoing course-based projects.
