An Undergraduate Research Experience Studying Ras and Ras Mutants

Each January from 2010 to 2014, an undergraduate workshop on modeling biological systems was held at Lehman College of the City University of New York. The workshops were funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) Expedition in Computing, “Computational Modeling and Analysis of Complex Systems (CMACS).” The primary goal was to encourage students, especially women and under represented minorities, to persist in a science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) career. A secondary goal was for the students to develop habits supporting collaborative, interdisciplinary work. To these ends, the workshop staff engaged the students in active learning, using discussions, teaming exercises, and research projects. The student research projects were small, carefully delimited parts of the NSF project's investigation of how to use computational modeling and analysis to improve understanding of pancreatic cancer and atrial fibrillation. Post-workshop surveys show that the students who participated were enthusiastic about the workshops and about working in STEM fields; long-term follow-up of the students' careers found that 55 of the 61 college graduates (90%) had STEM jobs. The goal of this paper is to provide enough information, in conjunction with the workshop Web page, for other researchers to organize similar workshops. With this in mind, it describes the pedagogy, lists the lecture and exercise materials, and details the student research projects for 2014.

I. Introduction

Encouraging student persistence in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields has been a national policy goal since at least the 1980s [1]. This paper details an approach used in five workshops to encourage persistence in STEM fields, to engage underrepresented groups in STEM fields, and to develop student habits supporting collaborative, interdisciplinary work. The paper also describes student characteristics and research projects for the five workshops, provides details of the 2014 workshop, and gives the retention rate in STEM careers for the attending students. The workshops were funded by a multi-institution collaborative NSF grant, Expeditions in Computing: Computational Modeling and Analysis of Complex Systems (CMACS).