Nectar CURE: Week 1

CUREs, Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences, represent a departure from traditional lecture-based teaching methods. In CUREs, students learn in a much more interactive environment. There is a growing body of literature suggesting CUREs benefit students – and therefore schools – far better than lecture-based teaching (Example 1, Example 2, Example 3). Members and collaborators of Jonathan …

Journal Club: Factors Influencing Early Life Gut Microbial Communities

A new paper by Levin, A. et al was published open access in Scientific Reports entitled, “Joint effects of pregnancy, sociocultural, and environmental factors on early life gut microbiome structure and diversity.” The paper confirmed a lot of what we already now about what factors influence infant gut microbiomes (ex. breastfeeding, mode of delivery, pets, …

CURES Workshop Summary

The past few days I have been attending a workshop by Erin Dolan of the CURES program (Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience) at Santa Rosa Junior College. More than ever, courses are transitioning from the traditional lectureship structure to a hands-on interactive research approach. We came into the workshop with a course already in mind, and used …