Strategies for developing course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) to make entomology research more accessible and inclusive

Undergraduate research is a high-impact educational practice that provides many benefits to the student researchers and their faculty mentors. The traditional 1-on-1 approach to mentoring undergraduate researchers can be transformative for students, but limitations of space, time, and funding mean that these valuable opportunities are not available to everyone who seeks them. Thus, there is need for alternative approaches to help make undergraduate research in entomology more accessible and inclusive. To that end, we have developed a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) that embeds authentic research into the entomology curriculum at the University of Florida and can accommodate up to 32 students per semester. In this course, students work in collaborative teams on a novel research project alongside instructors who also serve as research mentors; these students collect publishable data and thus contribute new knowledge to the field. We present quantitative data from our CURE showing that students made significant gains in analytic skills, critical thinking, communication ability, and other metrics. A majority of the students had no prior experience in research or entomology but reported increased interest in pursuing further research opportunities and/or careers in entomology. These findings suggest that our CURE model can provide the same benefits as traditional research experiences, but on a larger scale– thus engaging and recruiting a more diverse array of students in our discipline. We also present practical strategies for instructors interested in developing CUREs for the first time, as well as techniques to enhance CUREs (via cross-institutional collaboration, internationalization, and more).