Federal second chance Pell grants were recently made widely available to incarcerated students in the United States to fund undergraduate education. Piedmont Virginia Community College was a pilot site for this expansion and began full scale implementation of transfer-oriented associate degrees at three correctional centers in its service area.…

The MicRoboCop project introduces chemistry students to the concepts and protocols of synthetic biology. MicRoboCop is a biosensor that has been designed for unique applications in forensic chemistry. The lab is carried out in collaboration with an instructor teaching a genetics course. Students in the biology course synthesize biosensors using…

Laboratory course redesign and effective implementation of an inquiry-based curriculum can be challenging, particularly when teaching assistants (TAs) are responsible for instruction. Our multiyear redesign of a traditional general chemistry laboratory course has included transitioning to a project based guided inquiry (PBGI) curriculum that…

The site-specific introduction of unnatural amino acids (UAAs) has been demonstrated to be a useful tool in protein engineering. Moreover, the incorporation of a UAA into a protein has become feasible with the increased commercial availability of UAAs and robust expression plasmids. In addition to the ease of incorporation, the concepts utilized…

Use of advanced mass spectrometry techniques in the undergraduate setting has burgeoned in the past decade. However, relatively few undergraduate experiments examine the proteomics tools of protein digestion, peptide accurate mass determination, and database searching, also known as peptide mass fingerprinting. In this experiment, biochemistry…

Information literacy is of paramount importance to any successful research program. Information techniques and skills should be infused throughout a student's undergraduate curriculum rather than being the focus of a single course. To this end, we have created several courses, beginning in the first year, where students review current scientific…

Water turbines have long been used to make work easier for humans while minimizing energy consumption. They are not only used in small- and large-scale operations, but also provide a great context for Integrative STEM education. Students can begin to understand the technological processes available by designing, building, and testing different…

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) studies of art represent an attractive way to introduce undergraduate students to concepts in nanoscience, vibrational spectroscopy, and instrumental analysis. Here, we present an undergraduate analytical or physical chemistry laboratory wherein a combination of normal Raman and SERS spectroscopy is used to…

Organ blood flow is determined by perfusion pressure and vasomotor tone in the resistance vessels of the organ. Local factors that regulate vasomotor tone include myogenic and metabolic autoregulation, flow-mediated and conducted responses, and vasoactive substances released from red blood cells. The relative importance of each of these factors…

Computer-based instruction in kindergarten classrooms can be controversial, but one Los Angeles charter school is showing promising results and plans to expand the hybrid approach. The school conducted an experiment with a teaching method called blended learning, in which students learn from computers as well as teachers. The kindergarten…

A new laboratory course has been developed at the University of Virginia for senior- level chemical engineering students. The new course is based on three 4-week long experiments in bioprocess engineering, energy conversion and catalysis, and polymer synthesis and characterization. The emphasis is on the integration of process steps and the…

Funded by innovative programs at the National Science Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Richmond faculty in biology, chemistry, mathematics, physics, and computer science teamed up to offer first- and second-year students the opportunity to contribute to vibrant, interdisciplinary research projects. The result was…

Discusses BioProjects, a new technique for helping students understand the scientific method, in which students formulate a hypothesis, test it, and present the project to the class. States that through biological, quantitative investigations conducted outside of the classroom, BioProjects helps students develop investigative as well as oral and…

This document reviews a collection of activities conducted by the Department of Physics at Virginia Commonwealth University to excite young people about physics so that they will be more likely to consider physics as a career. The Society of Physics Students performs demonstrations of physics experiments for Virginia high school physics classes…