When Maribel Lupe took biology at her rural Fresno County high school, she didn’t get opportunities to do lab work. As a Fresno State undergraduate, she was able to work hands-on in scientific research through the Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) program.
The opportunity to do research work transformed Lupe from a disengaged student to an aspiring educator who dreams of sharing the same opportunity with her future students.
“Growing up in Mendota, we were not as fortunate as other schools with more resources,” Lupe said. “When I talk to students who went to school in Fresno and Clovis, they tell me they dissected pigs and eyes. I didn’t get that opportunity.”
Lupe described herself as a hand-on learner and said the lack of practical experience in the lab contributed to her indifferent grades in high school biology.
“I remember sitting in class and the teacher just talking, giving facts, and it just went in one ear and out the other,” Lupe said. “We were expected to write notes and just understand it. Some people are good at that. I’m not. I want to see a real-life scenario or do an experiment.”
Lupe didn’t pursue higher education for several years, instead working as a phlebotomist, a clinical lab technician in a hospital and a high school tutor. Working in the practical environment of a hospital lab resparked her interest in science, and in her 30s Lupe enrolled at Fresno State as a biology major. In her first introductory biology class, she got the opportunity to do research work.
Bringing research into the curriculum
Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences integrate research directly into the curriculum. There are many opportunities for Fresno State students to volunteer to work on research projects, but these are not always accessible to students who work full-time jobs or have family commitments.
This program makes research opportunities more accessible by making research a course requirement during regular class time. Over 300 students in the College of Science and Mathematics at Fresno State are currently enrolled in CUREs classes, ranging from introductory courses to advanced upper-division classes.
This high-impact practice is made possible in part through funds from Fresno State’s annual Day of Giving – a 24-hour, online fundraising effort that will be held on Wednesday, March 18.
“CUREs projects teach students to think like scientists,” said Dr. Joy Goto, senior associate dean of the College of Science and Mathematics. “It’s a wonderful experience for students to start thinking critically about ideas.”
Goto said research experiences teach students that science is about pursuing new knowledge through open-ended experiment, trial and error.
“A really important educational component in science is to learn how to fail and then learn from that failure and keep going,” Goto said. “In most traditional lab courses, you follow the protocol for the lab and you know the outcome already. With a CURE course, you don’t know the actual outcome, which is an experience that researchers have, which we want our students to experience early in their education.”
Research experience makes STEM less intimidating
Lupe, now a senior about to graduate, still vividly remembers her first CUREs research project, which involved testing how Tetrahymena, a microorganism that lives in freshwater lakes and streams, reacts to sunscreen.
“We put the Tetrahymena in water mixed with sunscreen, and we saw how the sunscreen affected its motility, how long the Tetrahymena lived or if the sunscreen killed it on the spot,” Lupe said. “For most of the specimens, the sunscreen was instant death. It was amazing to see. We understood how this could damage the ecosystem and affect the rest of the world.”
Lupe plans to become a high school biology teacher in the San Joaquin Valley, and she hopes to bring similar research experiences to her future students. Lupe works as a high school tutor, and she sees how research experiences can make science courses less intimidating to students.
“I think that if we start students doing research in high school, by the time they get to college it’s not going to be as big and scary to them,” Lupe said. “Kids tell me that science is too hard, that it’s not for them. I tell them every major is hard, but a STEM major is doable. I feel my role with students should be to encourage them that they can do science.”
Lupe said the program is critical for developing the scientific workforce that is needed in Central California.
“CUREs supports the people who will be the doctors, educators and researchers here in the Valley,” Lupe said. “Fresno State has given me so many opportunities, and that’s why I want to stay here and give students in my community the same thing.”
Teaching students confidence and creative problem solving
Dayeon Moon, an international student from South Korea, said the value of the program is that it gives students opportunities to become more confident in their own abilities.
“I didn’t have any research opportunities when I was educated in Korea,” Moon said. “I always wanted to get involved in STEM research, but it was kind of intimidating. It sounds so scary and so professional, to the point where I felt I wasn’t good enough. But with CUREs, I was able to get out of my comfort zone and learn how scientific research works.”
Kevina Pinto, a senior majoring in biology, said her upper division CUREs courses gave her the autonomy to design her own experiments, which has given her a foundation in critical thinking that has helped her in all her later research projects.
“In my genetics and cell biology class, we started from scratch for the project” Pinto said. “The professor asked, ‘What do you want to do? What do you want to learn about this worm, C. briggsae?’ That was really fun brainstorming as a class. If we want to look at this or that, how do we measure it? What variable do you look at?”
Pinto said her research experience has helped her obtain a position working on a medical research project at UCSF Fresno. Pinto plans on studying medicine and practicing as a primary care physician in the Central Valley.
Finding a passion for research
John Cisneros, a chemistry major, found his passion for research through his early experiences with CUREs classes.
“Being in the research lab made me find my passion for organic chemistry and helping others understand it,” Cisneros said. “It’s exciting to say, ‘yes, I synthesized this molecule, now let’s see how it works in the real world.’ Research is challenging sometimes, and it can definitely be frustrating, too, when something just doesn’t work. But it’s opened my eyes to the real world, because not everything goes as planned, and then I have to break down why this reaction didn’t work. It’s really helped with my problem-solving skills.”
Finding that passion has refocused Cisneros’ educational goals. He is now highly focused on research, working on three different projects. He plans to pursue a Ph.D. in chemistry with the goal of working as a researcher and a professor. He presented his research on creating new insect-repelling molecules this winter at the annual conference of the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science.
“Presenting at conferences has really helped build my confidence,” Cisneros said. “It’s scary to present to people who have their Ph.D.s and obviously know more than you. But the conference was amazing because it was aimed at students like me, and it was really reassuring that research is not just for someone from a very rich neighborhood and has all the connections in the world. It’s for people like me who have families that were farmworkers. It made me feel like I could make a difference.”
Fresno State’s annual 24-hour, online Day of Giving will be Wednesday, March 18. Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences and other high-impact practices in the College and Science and Mathematics rely on private financial support, such as funds raised from Day of Giving, to support experiential learning activities for students. Visit fresnostate.dayofgiving.edu to learn how to support the College of Science and Mathematics today.
