A Course-Based Undergraduate Conference Experience in Computational Biology

本科生的研究经历在招募和吸引STEM学科的学生方面取得了巨大成功。然而，许多机构缺乏为大多数本科生提供这种体验的资源。基于课程的本科生研究经验（CUREs）将研究活动整合到课程中，吸引更多的本科生并报告类似的学习成果。参加会议是研究经历的一个具体例子，很少有本科生能够参与其中。CURE的自然延伸是基于课程的本科生会议体验。里德学院是俄勒冈州波特兰的一所主要的本科院校，将于2016年秋季开设跨学科的高级计算系统生物学课程（预计招收12名学生）。该奖项将允许班级参加在华盛顿州西雅图举行的ACM生物信息学，计算生物学和健康信息学会议（ACM- bcb 2016）。ACM-BCB是一个理想的会议体验场所，因为它提供的工作质量，会议主题与课程的相关性，以及地理位置靠近里德学院。ACM-BCB将整合到课程大纲中：学生将阅读和讨论论文，与演讲者会面并互动，并将会议的想法作为为期数周的基于编程的期末项目的一部分。学生将把他们的研究成果以海报的形式提交给ACM-BCB和相关的研讨会。该研究涉及使用图和图扩展对信号转导通路进行建模的不同方法。这项提议的广泛影响是多方面的。首先，它将通过教育学生关于计算机科学在生物学中的应用来促进跨学科研究。其次，它将赋予学生一个独特的机会，很少本科生获得，导致预期的信心增加从事科学和科学研究。第三，它将为来自其他机构的pi提供一个与强大的跨学科本科生互动的机会。里德学院在获得数学和科学博士学位的学生中所占比例排名第三，ACM-BCB提供了一个强大的交流机会。拟议中的旅行也是招募STEM中代表性不足群体的潜在机制。2015-2016学年的计算生物学入门课程涵盖了8个不同专业（包括数学与自然科学部以外的4个专业）的所有年级（大一到大四）的学生。此外，完成课程的学生中有60%是女性，而这一群体传统上在计算机科学领域的代表性不足。因此，有资格参加高级课程（以及提议的会议旅行）的学生包括一个在性别、年级和宣布的专业方面各不相同的群体。

Research experiences for undergraduates have been enormously successful in recruiting and engaging students within STEM disciplines. However, many institutions lack the resources to offer such experiences to a majority of their undergraduates. Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) integrate research activities within the curriculum, engaging a larger subset of undergraduates and reporting similar learning outcomes. Conference attendance is a specific example of a research experience in which few undergraduates get to engage. A natural extension of a CURE is a course-based undergraduate conference experience. Reed College, a primarily undergraduate institution in Portland OR, will offer an interdisciplinary upper-level Computational Systems Biology course in the fall of 2016 (anticipated enrollment of twelve students). This award will allow the class to attend the ACM Conference on Bioinformatics, Computational Biology and Health Informatics (ACM-BCB 2016) in Seattle, WA. ACM-BCB is an ideal venue for a conference experience due to the quality of presented work, relevance of the conference topics to the course, and geographic proximity to Reed. ACM-BCB will be integrated into the course syllabus: students will read and discuss papers, meet and interact with presenters, and extend ideas from the conference as part of a multi-week programming based final project. Students will submit their research work as posters to ACM-BCB and the associated workshops. The research concerns different ways to model signal transduction pathways using graphs and graph extensions. The broader impacts of this proposal are multi-faceted. First, it will promote interdisciplinary research by educating students about computer science applications within biology. Second, it will empower students with a unique opportunity that few undergraduates obtain, leading to an anticipated increased confidence in engaging in science and scientific research. Third, it will provide an opportunity for PIs from other institutions to interact with strong interdisciplinary undergraduates. Reed produces the third largest institutional-yield ratio of baccalaureates who obtain PhDs in the Math & Sciences, and ACM-BCB provides a powerful networking opportunity.The proposed travel is also a potential mechanism for recruiting underrepresented groups in STEM. The introductory computational biology courses in 2015-2016 included students from all years (freshmen through seniors) majoring in eight different areas (including four outside the Division of Math & Natural Sciences). Further, 60% of the students who completed the course were women, a group traditionally underrepresented in computer science. Thus, the pool of students eligible for the upper-level course (and the proposed conference travel) include a group that is diverse in terms of gender, class year, and declared major.