Molecular parasitology CURE: Understanding the apoptosis pathway in kinetoplastid parasites

Embedding inquiry driven research in undergraduate courses allows integration of core concepts and competencies necessary to developing scientific thinking and lab skills. These are critical skills for undergraduates to be successful in science careers and for admission into graduate school. However, there are only a handful of examples of collaborative CUREs in Biology where students have an opportunity to connect with a network of researchers outside of their own institution, and none in the field of parasitology. In Spring 2021, we piloted a mini-CURE where student groups from University of Mary Washington and Georgia State University collaboratively completed research projects as part of a research-intensive course on Molecular Parasitology. The benefits of this approach were immediately obvious as students interacted across institutions, learned from each other’s disciplinary expertise, and informed their own research with data collected by their collaborators. It provided enrichment to the course by adding networking opportunities as well as cross-disciplinary knowledge sharing. We present here our CURE model as a way for other educators to design and implement similar cross-institutional interdisciplinary CUREs that can be modified to align with their research expertise.