If you already know how an experiment turns out before going into the lab, are you fully engaging students in science? These spoilers are just one reason undergrads tend to leave science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Chemistry Professor Jonathan Dattelbaum sees a way to bring back the mystery and excitement.

The approach, called a course-based undergraduate research experience or CURE, gained momentum in recent years and shows so much promise that in January the National Science Foundation awarded Dattelbaum and colleagues from eight other schools a $1.96 million grant to advance it further.

“You’re engaging undergrads in the classroom in investigative projects where they don’t necessarily know the outcome of the research,” Dattelbaum explained. “They may have to do things more than one time to iterate and to design their own project.”

About two years ago Dattelbaum joined the Biochemistry Authentic Scientific Inquiry Lab (BASIL), a biochemistry consortium of faculty from across the country dedicated to helping students think like scientists. By collaborating with the group, he grew interested in biochemistry CUREs and the grant project supporting them led by principal investigator Paul Craig from Rochester Institute of Technology.

NSF grants for improving undergraduate STEM education have three levels. The consortium received the first two before Dattelbaum arrived. The latest grant is the third and highest level. “It is supporting multiple universities, but it’s a big one,” he said.

Starting June 1, the five-year grant supports CURE development through mentorships, support workshops both virtual and in-person, and research into the barriers to adoption so the group can make the project sustainable at universities, including the University of Richmond.

“The data is pretty good that STEM disciplines have high attrition rates, and that’s particularly true for students from underrepresented backgrounds,” Dattelbaum pointed out. “Research experiences in general, and CUREs in particular, offer sustained mentorship and authentic research learning environments that have been shown to help students stay in the sciences.”

At UR, Dattelbaum and his colleague Julie Pollock developed an intensive project for an upper-level biochemistry teaching lab with some of the same goals as a CURE. Students take an unknown protein, predict its function, and then design experiments to prove it’s the protein they predicted.

“If it doesn’t work, they have to go back, iterate, tweak the design, and redo it,” Dattelbaum said. “That really advances their learning — and their confidence in being able to do that in their chosen field.”