Collaborative Research: Genomics as the Foundation of a New Undergraduate Curriculum

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Biological Sciences (61)Arizona State University in collaboration with Mesa Community College and Seattle Pacific University is implementing a genomics-focused, research-based approach for teaching the core biological science classes. The intellectual merit of this project is that the courses involved teach critical concepts and skills by integrating all courses into a large, highly collaborative genomics research project that involves multiple schools and educational levels. The program is interdisciplinary, consisting of courses in which bacterial genome projects are initiated, completed, and published over the course of several semesters. The course work is itself a research project, and the students learn all of the necessary skills and concepts as each new stage of the project requires a new level of expertise. Many students also initiate individual research projects to follow-up their classroom work. This method of teaching was developed by PI Slater and his collaborator Dr. Goodner when they sequenced the Agrobacterium tumefaciens genome (Goodner et al.,Science. 294:2323, the latter publication had over a dozen undergraduates as coauthors) and has since been very successfully implemented by Dr. Goodner and his colleagues at Hiram College (Goodner et al., ASM News. 69:584). The approach includes integration of a laboratory robotics component and extends an ongoing collaboration with Mesa Community College.The broader impacts of this proposal include improved articulation of efforts between the university and a local community college district, improved recruitment and retention of students in STEM fields, a focused effort on minority recruitment, significant contributions by undergraduate students to the scientific literature, and graduates with a rich set of intellectual, technical and communications skills. Detailed materials are being produced and communicated to educators from other institutions.