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Students engaged about half a day per week plus weekly group lab meetings, culminating in end-of-semester poster presentations. 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was the main focus of the pilot undergraduate research program?","Question",{"text":63,"@type":64},"The program focused on local aquatic ecosystems, specifically the Missouri Western State University campus ponds, as a shared research setting for an interdisciplinary group.","Answer",{"name":66,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":67},"Who participated in the program and what disciplines were involved?",{"text":68,"@type":64},"Nine undergraduate students and five faculty from multiple disciplines participated, including geography, virology, ecology, vertebrate and invertebrate zoology.",{"name":70,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":71},"How was the program structured over the semester and how were results presented?",{"text":72,"@type":64},"Students spent approximately half a day of research per week, attended weekly hour-long lab meetings as a full group, and presented findings at end-of-semester poster 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\nfocus for an undergraduate research group  \nMichael L. Grantham, Carissa Ganong, Dawn M. Drake, Ashley Elias, and Mark S. Mills Department of Biology, Missouri Western State University, 4525 Downs Drive, Saint Joseph MO, 64507  \nAbstract: Undergraduate research experiences benefit students’ scientific skills, and recent trends in undergraduate research and education include focusing on interdisciplinary projects and on place-based learning. Here we describe a semester-long pilot interdisciplinary undergraduate research program focused on local aquatic ecosystems, discuss perceived benefits of this research approach, and show how this program’s structure could be modified for use at other undergraduate institutions. The program included nine undergraduate students and five faculty from multiple scientific disciplines (geography, virology, ecology, vertebrate and invertebrate zoology) and involved approximately half a day of research per student per week and weekly hour-long lab meetings ofthe entire group, followed by end-of-semester poster presentations to the university. Student self-assessment data indicated that the program improved students’ perceptions of their scientific ability, as well as their comfort level at performing scientific skills. We suggest that bringing together faculty from multiple disciplines with projects focused on the same local ecosystem is a valuable technique for providing undergraduate students with not only hands-on research experience, but also with (1) exposure to a diversity of research areas and methods and (2) a better understanding of the ecosystems in and around their campus.  \nIntroduction  \nResearch experiences for undergraduate students have been shown to have many benefits, including increasing the likelihood of students pursuing STEM graduate degrees (Eagan et al. 2013) . Among students that choose to attend graduate school, those that participated in research experiences as an undergraduate possessed stronger research skills than those that have no undergraduate research experience (Gilmore et al. 2015) . A survey of undergraduates participating in research at liberal arts colleges showed that 91% of students reported professional and/or personal gains from their experience (Seymour et al. 2004), and Lopatto (2004) found similar positive results in a larger survey of >1100 undergraduate researchers. Most participating students appreciate the benefits of research experiences.  \nIn the past two decades, some research experiences for undergraduates have shifted from a single-discipline focus to an interdisciplinary approach, which helps to prepare students for the interdisciplinarity inherent in many STEM careers and can increase diversity in research applicant pools (Raicu and Furst 2009) . Another recent emphasis in some STEM disciplines has been a focus on place-based science teaching, defined by Semken and Freeman (2008) as a style of teaching that “focuses on local and regional environments and synthesizes different ways of knowing them.” Place-based education may increase diversity in educational programs (Semken 2005) and increase both the students’ academic performance and feeling of belonging (Johnson et al. 2020) .  \nSome recent undergraduate research experiences have focused on combining an interdisciplinary approach with place-based learning (e.g., Montgomery 2020) . Here we describe our development of a pilot interdisciplinary semester-long undergraduate research program focused on a specific local ecosystem, the Missouri Western State University campus ponds. Some faculty in the MWSU biology department have conducted research in the campus ponds for years, while others began pond-focused projects in the 2020-2021 academic year, and we determined that working together as a research group would allow us to address larger questions than our individual labs could address. The goal ","cbCaisCMbkS9c7LI","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaisCMbkS9c7LI","pdf",411592,"English","# Abstract\n# Introduction\n# Procedure","[{\"question\":\"What was the main focus of the pilot undergraduate research program?\",\"answer\":\"The program focused on local aquatic ecosystems, specifically the Missouri Western State University campus ponds, as a shared research setting for an interdisciplinary group.\"},{\"question\":\"Who participated in the program and what disciplines were involved?\",\"answer\":\"Nine undergraduate students and five faculty from multiple disciplines participated, including geography, virology, ecology, vertebrate and invertebrate zoology.\"},{\"question\":\"How was the program structured over the semester and how were results presented?\",\"answer\":\"Students spent approximately half a day of research per week, attended weekly hour-long lab meetings as a full group, and presented findings at end-of-semester poster symposiums.\"}]","Connecting Interdisciplinary Research and Place-Based Learning - Using a Local Ecosystem as the Focus for an Undergraduate Research Group | PDF",1792080463]