Project Description
The Ohio Consortium for Undergraduate Research (OCUR) is comprised of the chemistry departments of 15 educational institutions spanning the State of Ohio, including community colleges, liberal arts colleges, and research universities.
We have three Project goals:
- First, to transform the current 1st and 2nd year chemistry courses into a research-intensive program so students will pursue additional scientifically oriented training, appreciate the scientific and ethical nature of research, and adopt the scientific method as a lifelong problem-solving technique;
- Second, to increase the retention and graduation rates in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields; and,
- Third, to generate new knowledge in the chemical sciences through multi-site faculty-student collaborative research projects that pool their results in a common data base.
Project Design
The central focus of the REEL Undergraduate Research Center will be the development and implementation of a series of laboratory Research Modules (RM) for use in the 1st and 2nd year chemistry courses in 15 Ohio institutions. The initial development and implementation will be done by Module Development Teams (MDT) distributed over 5 institutions for each of three research focus categories, with a leader designated for each area.
