NOTE: This program is no longer active.
This site is for archival purposes only.
Welcome to our STEM-RTI site!
This program involves undergraduate student-faculty mentor teams in a research-teaching integration strategy (STEM-RTI) designed to:
- Enhance undergraduate student participation and success in STEM disciplines,
- Improve the sponsored students' training and skills in preparation for graduate school, STEM teaching, or entering the STEM workforce, and
- Incorporate results of current, first-class research into the regular classroom/laboratory curriculum
The teams initially conduct basic research and, based on results and topic fit, develop new lectures and/or laboratory modules that use active learning techniques. Under the guidance of faculty mentors, the new modules are presented by the undergraduate STEM-RTI fellows in courses taught at UTEP. This process engages students in the art of teaching their peers early on.
Students attending the courses evaluate how efficiently their undergraduate peers deliver the modules, while their learning outcomes are evaluated by traditional means such as tests and/or lab reports.
The new modules are disseminated through the annual COURI symposium and this website, while outcomes of the program are being presented at national and international conferences. Workshops will be developed to train others on best research-teaching integration practices derived from this project.
Integrating mentored research, guided curriculum design, and peer-led teaching and learning is having a synergistic impact that extends beyond the training of sponsored students, novel scientific discoveries, and new teaching strategies. The approach is leading to a cycle where:
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number DUE-1140469.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.