CHRONOQUEST: A TEAM-BASED, STUDENT-MANAGED AUTHENTIC GEOCHRONOLOGY RESEARCH COURSE

Mentoring individualized or “independent study” undergraduate research experiences has always been a core aspect of my self-identification as a professor of geology. However, over the past few years it has become increasingly challenging to recruit undergraduate students to undertake individualized research projects. In an effort to entice new students to research I entered into the CURE (course-based undergraduate research experience) world. CHRONOQUEST was implemented as a team-based, student-managed, authentic research course for undergraduates. As a research recruiting effort the course was targeted to sophomore or junior level students, but was not strictly limited to geology majors. The course was offered as a one credit per semester elective with a target enrollment of 4-6 undergraduate students. It required a two semester commitment from students to allow them to engage in all aspects of geologic research: background literature study, planning and conducting fieldwork, lab work, data collection, interpretation of data and communication of results to the larger geoscience community. As this was the initial offering of the course my pedagogical research goals at this stage were simply to collect observations regarding the student self-management aspect and team-based approach in order to formulate a hypothesis for testing in future offerings of the course. Course participants were given a seed question and were directed to: develop a research question that could be addressed with available experimental resources and instrumentation, set research goals for the team, divide tasks and set timetables. Overall the course and research were very successful. The students arrived at exactly the same research question and selected the same general field area that I had anticipated. They executed the project successfully generating original and important data. The students are communicating their results at this meeting and we anticipate preparing a manuscript for peer-review. Similarities and differences in educational outcomes between the CURE experience and prior individualized undergraduate research will be presented. A preliminary evaluation of the success of the course as a recruiting gateway to further scientific research by the course participants will also be discussed.