Abstract:
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Science is about doing (asking questions, experimenting, analyzing data, solving problems, and designing solutions). STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) by its very nature is interdisciplinary with scientists from many fields coming together to solve problems large and small. Course Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) are rapidly becoming a model for undergraduate science education in which students enroll in a course that is focused on a research question and students themselves generate hypotheses, develop protocols, generate the data, and analyze the outcomes. Through an NSF funded project (DRL#1606903), we introduced interdisciplinary CUREs to allow science, mathematics, statistics, and applied computing students to learn from each other in a synergistic and realistic manner. The statistics major students have been involved in these interdisciplinary CUREs and are "essential" to the design and ultimate analysis of the CURE's developed research question based on biology and ecology field work. We discuss the implementation of these CUREs, and benefits and issues that arose from including statistics students on such diverse projects.
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