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Episode Notes | Transcript | AskTheGuest

 Hi Fives (5 Highlights)   Click for 2-Minute Listen

Professor Hewlett is the Executive Director of Community College UG Research Initiative (CCURI) and Director of BioTechnology and BioManufacturing at Finger Lakes Community College, New York.

This is an inspiring story of how one person can make a difference. Prof. Hewlett took his initial learnings from his lab and was able to bring UG Research to over 120 CC campuses with NSF’s backing.

Prof Hewlett gives us a great overview of CCURI, the need for undergraduate research at CC, How CCURI was born, The Impact it is having on other Community Colleges, the successes and finally advice for students to seek out opportunities at their CC.

Hi-Fives from the Podcast are:

  1. The Start @ Finger Lakes
  2. Origins of CCURI
  3. Structure of CCURI
  4. Institutional Commitment
  5. Seek out Research Opportunities

Episode Notes

Episode Title: Prof. James Hewlett of Finger Lakes on CCURI: Bringing UG Research to Community Colleges.

Episode summary introduction: Prof. James Hewlett first tells How UG Research started at Finger Lakes Community College, the origins and structure of CCURI, How they help other Community Colleges start UG Research and finally, advice to students & faculty.

Professor Hewlett is the Executive Director of Community College UG Research Initiative (CCURI) and Director of BioTechnology and BioManufacturing at Finger Lakes Community College, New York.

In particular, we discuss the following with him:

  • What is CCURI?
  • Structure and Organization of CCURI
  • Helping College Partners
  • Community Colleges’ and Students’ Successes
  • Advice for Community College Students

Topics discussed in this episode:

  • Introducing Prof. Jim Hewlett, FLCC [0:38]
  • Hi Fives - Podcast Highlights [2:06]
  • Professional Background [4:27]
  • Why UG Research? [5:35]
  • How it all Started at Finger Lakes [6:59]
  • Origins of CCURI [8:30]
  • The Model [10:40]
  • Structure of CCURI [14:02]
  • Resources for College Partners [17:35]
  • Measuring Success [19:30]
  • Community College Successes [20:49]
  • High School Dropout to PhD [22:39]
  • What kinds of Students are good at Research [25:04]
  • What’s ahead for CCURI [26:13]
  • Skills Needed for Research [28:42]
  • Research versus Teaching: A False Choice [31:55]

Our Guest: Professor Jim Hewlett, is the Executive Director of Community College UG Research Initiative (CCURI) and Director of BioTechnology and BioManufacturing at Finger Lakes Community College, New York. Professor Hewlett received his Bachelor’s in Biology from Bucknell University, Masters in Physiology/Marine Biology from University of Connecticut and PhD in Pharmacology from University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry.

Memorable Quote: “...at this point in my career, I don't see them as, as two separate things that, that if you're, if you're teaching science, then you're you should be doing research and they should become, like completely intertwined with each other because I mean, that's that's our jobs,” Prof. Hewlett.

Episode Transcript: Please visit Episode’s Transcript.

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Episode Transcript

Transcript of the episode’s audio.

<Start Snippet> Jim H  0:14  

Yeah, well, I would have never thought we'd be at 100 and whatever 146 that we're at right now that we'd have in our network when I started with just the two students. So, you know, it's been, it's been an incredible, incredibly fulfilling journey I should say, for me and for a lot of what I work with.

Venkat  0:38  [Introducing Prof Jim Hewlett, Finger Lakes]

That is Professor Jim Hewlett, Executive Director of Community College UG Research Initiative (or CCURI for short) and Director of BioTechnology and BioManufacturing at Finger Lakes Community College, New York.

Hello, I am your host, Venkat Raman.

Startups with two guys in a garage is folklore.

This one is about one Professor and two students in a Lab.

It wouldn’t be melodramatic to call what happened after that a movement.

A movement where UG Research has come to over 120 College Community Campuses around the country, and is growing.

We are honored to have Prof. Jim Hewlett on our podcast to tell this story.

Venkat Raman  1:31

In this Podcast, Prof. Hewlett first tells How UG Research started at Finger Lakes Community College, the origins and structure of CCURI, How they help other Community Colleges start UG Research and finally, advice to students & faculty.

Before we jump into the podcast, here are the Hi-Fives,  Five Highlights from the podcast:

Jim H  2:06  [Highlights - Hi Fives]

[The Start @ Finger Lakes]

I wish my story was one of I had this grand plan in mind and it was it was organized and laid out for us. That's that's not the story. It was sort of serendipity. I had a faculty member stopped me in the hall and said, Hey, I just got a quick question for you. Would you be able to give you know if I gave you a blood sample from a bird? Would you be able to tell what the sex of the bird is?

[Origins of CCURI]

I talked to people we we spent some time workshopping it and came up with this model. We tested it on our campus. We've had we saw a lot of great benefits from it. And so what I did was I approached the National Science Foundation with my model and a grant proposal saying, you know, I'd like to scale this on our campus. But I'd also like to try it on other on other campuses.

[Structure of CCURI]

We developed a two and a half day workshop strategic planning workshop that they would send a team to, and really build sort of a five year strategic plan for how they want to actually do this.

 

[Institutional Commitment]

Gaston College, which is in North Carolina and Anoka Ramsey, which is in outside of Minneapolis. And those two institutions have programs that operate at the institutional level, that now are focused on providing students in in all disciplines.

[Seek out Research Opportunities]

And don't be afraid to you know, knock on a door and say, Hey, I really would like to look for ways to get, get engaged in a project.

Venkat Raman  3:35

These were the Hi5s, brought to you by “College Matters. Alma Matters.”

Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Venkat Raman  3:48

Now, without further ado, here’s the podcast with Professor Jim Hewlett!

------

Venkat Raman  3:54  

Let me start by welcoming you to our podcast, "College Matters. Alma Matters." Thank you, thank you so much for making the time.

Jim H  4:03  

Thanks for having me.

Jim H  4:04  

Sure thing. Sure thing. So really excited to talk to you about a variety of topics related to undergraduate research and community colleges. So I thought the best place to start might be a little bit about your background, how you got started and how you got into all this. And then we can sort of dive in.

Jim H  4:27  [Professional Background]

Okay, um, well, I actually, I've been at Finger Lakes Community College for my entire career. So 20 I'm now 23 years into it and I came there straight out of graduate school. I was at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Before I came over to Finger Lakes in my teaching role. There was there was no undergraduate research on our campus and at that time, very little examples of undergraduate research happening at any of the community colleges in our area, and certainly I found out later, that was true across the country. So I'm professor of biology there. And so I, I came from, you know, a background where I had opportunity to do undergraduate research. So I thought that at some point, during my early career at Finger Lakes, I would look for ways to maybe give students opportunities there to get involved.

Venkat Raman  5:28  

Tell us about undergraduate research. I mean, why, why is it important? Why did you feel that was important?

Jim H  5:35  [Why UG Research?]

Yeah, I mean, well, it's tricky, because I think when, so at a community college, which is, you know, very often a lot of the programs are, are designed for the students to be prepared for jobs, after two years, they're there to get the skills to a specific job. And I didn't see that any different for our, our students, when you want to somebody for the that, after being a scientist, you know, the best way to do that is by like, engaging, you know, in graduate research, because your, that's where you're learning your, your craft, just, that's the best way to do like, by far.

Venkat Raman  6:14  

So you thought it was a, it was an essential ingredient, if you will, for any kind of scientific study.

Jim H  6:24  

And at the time, it was weird, because most of my colleagues were doing what I would, you know, what I started out doing, which was content focused and not very active and really didn't have that ingredient of thinking about a training opportunity, and not just as something that you're doing that sort of a unique thing that you wanted to do with students. It's, it's, it is the way to train scientists right when you start out.

Venkat Raman  6:51  

So tell us how you got undergraduate research started at Finger Lakes? And how did that, how did you sort of pioneer that? Or start?

Jim H  6:59  [How it all Started at Finger Lakes]

Yeah, I wish, I wish my story was one of I had this grand plan in mind, it was it was organized and laid out for us. That's that's not the story. It was it was sort of serendipity. I had a faculty member stop me in the hall. And hey, I just got a quick question for you. Would you be able to give you know, if I gave you a blood sample from a bird? Would you be able to tell what the sex of the bird is and have a biotechnology program that we were pretty active lab that could pose I said, look into it and see if it's possible. And I thought, let me just grab a couple of students. And we'll, we'll just work on it as an outside of class instead of a project. And when you look at our website, now, you'll see that our logo is actually the head of a Redtail. Hawk. And that's because that's where it all started. It started with this project. And trying to figure out why it's very strange.

So really, it was just me and two students working on a project on the side, I saw what the experience did for them. And I was committed after that experience, which was now 17 years ago, to prove I knew I had to get this out to other students, I had to scale this, it just had to happen.

So it just sort of then I just sort of flailed around for a while until I could get it off the ground. That's that's where CCURI started - the community college Undergraduate Research Initiative was with myself and those two students.

Venkat Raman  8:22  

Tell us about the origins of the CCURI, I guess, Community College Undergraduate Research Initiative.

Jim H  8:30  [Origins of CCURI]

Yeah, so So after I had that little project with those two students, I thought, well, the best way to scale that up is to develop a course. Right? That's, that seems to make sense. Just create a course which, which I did, I developed and got a course approved on our on our campus through the our university system. And then when it went live for people to register, I got nobody registered for it. It well, I shouldn't say that the two students I was working with, they registered for it. But sure, sure. So and there's there's a million reasons as to why that didn't work, which we could get into. But in reality, what had to happen was I had to build a model for how to sort of scaffold the experience across our curriculum. And so I talked to people we, we spent some time workshopping it, and came up with this model. We tested it on our campus. We've had, we saw a lot of great benefits from it. And so what I did was I approached the National Science Foundation with my model and a grant proposal saying, you know, I'd like to scale this on our campus, but I'd also like to try it on other on other campuses. So we were able to get some funding from the National Science Foundation to try out that model at six other community colleges. And that's, that's kind of how we got started. We would we would, every iteration of it, we would expand to more and more schools, we would modify the model we would add new models for how to embed the experience. And so now we're we went from the early days of those six community colleges. We have 46 partners across the country that we've support financially and also with resources, and then another 84 campuses that are in our affiliate program, which we help out with faculty development for helping them build programs. So, you know, we're 120 Plus community colleges across the country now. National Network.

Venkat Raman  10:23  

That's awesome. I mean, from from that little, you know, serendipitous sort of start.

Venkat Raman  10:33  

So, you know, I'm really intrigued by when you talk about a model, can you tell us a little bit more about what that is?

Jim H  10:40  [The Model]

Yeah, so So what it is, is you we look at starting out when the student walks in the door, right? We don't want to wait. So just set some context, my undergraduate research experience, the very first one I ever had, was my first semester of my junior year, in my undergraduate education. Sure, well, we, you know, that's, in my opinion, that's, that's too late. Right, we wanted to, we wanted to figure out a way to start, you know, reaching the student when they walked in the door. So we thought the best way to do that was to modify our introductory coursework. So though, I'll just use the example of introductory biology. Yeah, is we would, we would take a section of that course. And we would, we would rework the what we call we called the lecture portion, to become very student centered, very hands on very active learning in the classroom. And then a sequence of laboratory activities that were mostly cookbook, which a lot of people will be familiar with. Yeah. And they follow these instructions, and then you do a write up, and you're done. And we through those, we threw those out, and brought in new new labs that would help students build the skills around, or the research project that we wanted to sort of implement at our institution. So that was what we would get them to build skills, but I'd also kind of put the hook into them. And then in the next year or so in their second year, we would provide opportunities for them to spend longer amounts of time, so time on task with projects that they engaged in, in those intro courses. So it's kind of a combination of curriculum reform, and then project development. But it's scaffolded across the the two years. So it's not, it's not a one off thing where they're getting it in a certain semester, the experience is sort of it sort of grows across the, the the four semesters, and that that's, that worked really well. And we figured out a way to, to share that with other community colleges so that they could try it out. And then we what we did was we learned from other sites on how to make it better, or how to add resources to it, things like that. So we owe we owe a lot. We owe a debt of gratitude to a lot of our partners and helping us continue to find best practices on how to do this.

Venkat Raman  12:50  

No, I mean, I think I think I can see why it worked. I mean, first of all, you integrated it with some natural sort of courses that students would take. And secondly, having the ability to modify that and catch them young. That's the sort of before they got set. That's great.

Jim H  13:09  

Yeah, and that we'll call those are called, those are called cures cure are a course based undergraduate research experience. And cures work really well, because, like you just said, they're, they're embedded, right? They're embedded within the coursework, that that faculty we're going to be teaching anyway. And the students are going to be taking as part of their degree program. So right, it's gonna get an embedded, it doesn't it doesn't feel like something extra, that somebody else, it's really a modification of what they're already engaged in. So there we call those cures.

Venkat Raman  13:47  

Tell us a little bit about the colleges and how I mean, how the CCURI is organized. Is this sort of an organized thing, Or is it sort of a loosely coupled Organization?

Jim H  14:02  [Structure of CCURI]

Well, I mean, it's, it's, it's pretty well, I should say it's organized in a sense that, for the UN, I'll focus on those 44 institutions that we support are at a pretty high level, right. So the way that works is that we initially, we initially approached the Council on Undergraduate Research, and we, which is an organization that has been around forever, and ask them, Do you know of community colleges that that are looking to build undergrad research experiences on their campuses? And that's kind of how we got the first cohort that we could identify. And then what we did was we we developed a two and a half day workshop, a strategic planning workshop that they would send a team to, and really build sort of a five year strategic plan for how they want to actually do this and then and so centrally, I'm as a as the executive director, I'm sort of directing all the action tivities that are happening. But we also have a full time project manager, and a full time technician to help with, you know, projects that are being developed that help them build protocols or SOPs and things like that. So it is, you know, it is in a sense organized in that we sort of treat all those partners. The same in terms of what resources we can provide for them, they get the same amount of Faculty Development, and then mentorship and also follow up approach across, you know, now sub for some of them, seven, eight years. So, and that's all been through support from the National Science Foundation, most of the grants that we've had come from them.

Venkat Raman  15:42  

So, So do you help with courses and programs reconfiguring? Or do they does each community college pretty much figure out what they want to do?

Jim H  15:55  

So at that workshop, we present our model, and then we also, so they can see, you know, what we've sort of developed that we know has worked. And then what they do is they sort of they take that, that same, that same model, and then they modify it in ways that work for them, because they may. So the very first thing we do is we have them do sort of this self study, to have them look internally to see if there are parts of the model that just won't work at their institution, right. And if they won't work, then we got to figure out ways to piece together the parts that you're that aren't going to work so that you can still still do it. So that's really a, that's really a part of what we do at that workshop. So there is some flexibility in in how they modify it, we didn't want to go. We didn't want to go too far out from that though, because what we want to be able to do and what we have done is we wanted to be able to go back in, you know, go outside to go say go forward, and then look back and be able to do sort of studies of the network as a whole. So sort of like a meta analysis of our network. And so if everybody was doing something totally different, that would make that a challenge. All right. So that's what I wanted to have. And we wanted to have some consistency, which we were able to maintain. And as it turned out, it worked for them anyway. So it was it was kind of perfect.

Venkat Raman  17:11  

So what kind of resources to you provide through the NSF grant? Or how does each college or in addition to the way you kind of kickstart them with this workshop? Are there any other resources that you provide Or you're able to provide?

Jim H  17:35  [Resources for College Partners]

Yeah, so we we actually, initially, when we have a new partner come on board, we provide supply line, right. So if they're building up new projects, we have money that we can actually help them purchase supplies. In some instances, we actually, during the development phase of their program will support buying out some time for a faculty member that wants to be taking a lead on that, right, because initially, when you're developing, it does take a lot extra time outside of your normal your normal workload. And then, of course, the strategic planning meeting, which I talked about. And then the follow up is that we've been running techniques, workshops, pretty much, two year one, one for field techniques, and one for laboratory techniques. And what we do is we each each year, we survey our network and ask them for input on what techniques they are interested in, in gaining some experience. And so we let them tell us what what the workshops should look like. And then we and then we develop those workshops, and then and then provide support for them to attend those. So and then beyond that, we've got lots of resources on our website publications that we produce, from looking at our data that we've collected over the many years to simple mentorship, project management, lots of matchmaking, so someone will say, Hey, we've got an opportunity to do a project here in a campus, do you know anybody else that has something similar, we can do a lot of that. So it's it's a lot of mentorship, but there is also the financial component that everybody's looking for, which is good.

Venkat Raman  19:17  

So I'm wondering, how you guys are measuring, quote unquote, Success here? I mean, obviously, it's helping the students. Is there some way that you're tracking that?

Jim H  19:30  [Measuring Success]

Yeah, so we spend a lot of a significant, significant part of our budget is to hire an external evaluator. And there's a group out at Washington State University that we've been working with for four years now that that help us with that. And so we do collect a lot of data from our we asked them to do these reporting forms each year, which are pretty intensive. And we also asked them to employ these these certain surveys that we use for students to look for, you know, what their participation level is, but also how it might be impacting their, their intention to go on to get a four year degree or to go on to graduate school. So we do collect a lot of data, and we have that external evaluator that helps us look at that data. Sure. And so that that's one part that's very important, because it sort of gives us a way to do this sort of formative assessment along the way where we can, we can say, all right, maybe we need to shift gears here, because we're seeing something in the data where our partners need us to have, you know, provide supports in this area more than others and things like that. So that's been very beneficial.

Venkat Raman  20:42  

Any success stories, or vignettes that you could share from these so many years?

Jim H  20:49  [Community College Successes]

Yeah, the ones that I really like to talk about are the ones that institutions that had no, no research on their campus at all mean, literally, literally zero when they came to us. Yeah, and now have implemented it across their entire campus. So the two, the two that I like to talk about is, is Gaston College, which is in North Carolina, Anoka-Ramsey, which is in outside of Minneapolis. And those two institutions have programs that operate at the institutional level, that now are focused on providing students in, in all disciplines. I'm a biologist, so I can't, I can't really talk about what it would be like to do research in humanities, but but they want to, they've really committed to that from the President, Board of Trustees President on down and, and have really sort of it. And so we we've been spending a lot of time studying institutional cultures to try to figure out, well, how do those two schools do that? Right, what is what is it about those two schools that make them unique? Right that where we have other institutions that we know, have struggled, and we because we want to be able to share that right with the, with the community and say, hey, if your institution has these characteristics, you're you're right in line for success. If you don't have these, then you, you might find yourself struggling trying to get it off the ground. So that those are two institutions that I like to talk about a lot, because they've grown. I mean, they're, they're even beyond what we have at Finger Lakes. I mean, I'm proud of what we have at Finger Lakes, but we didn't get that far, which was really an impressive thing.

Venkat Raman  22:31  

How about, you know, any of your students or anything, any story from there? That might be worth recounting?

Jim H  22:39  [High School Dropout to PhD]

Yeah, I had a, I had a student. And early on when we, when we developed our first research class, who was was in my, she was in my intro bio course. And didn't, she kind of floundered around a lot, very quiet, didn't didn't say a whole lot. And when she went through that sequence of labs that we put into the bio class, she I could see her sort of getting heavily engaged, right? This, and this student became one of those two students that became part of this project. And in talking to her, she, she was a high school dropout. She had been homeless for a while she had been abused by in a relationship, floated around with jobs. And then and then came to us as a part time student, and then took part in this project. And it The incredible thing is that she would say things like, well, after this, I want to do more of this. And at one point saying, you know, I think I want to get my PhD. And I was like, Well hold on a second, you're only you know, you're only in your third semester of college. But let's, let's think about what that means. And in reality, she, I don't think she at that point knew what that really meant, like, what does it mean to go from, you know, a third semester at a community college to all the way out to getting your PhD, right. And so she didn't understand what that meant. But through just mentorship and trying to help her along the way. She ended up at the end of her, her tenure with us got a Barry Goldwater Scholarship, which is one of the most difficult challenging things to do as an undergraduate and it's the most one of the most premier scholarships and stem for undergrads, which allowed her to go to a four year institution where that you normally wouldn't have been able to afford and lo and behold, went out and got her PhD in microbiology. So, I mean, wow, from a homeless high school dropout who had had some, you know, serious family issues, all the way on to her PhD in microbiology, which is pretty incredible.

Venkat Raman  24:45  

Absolutely, absolutely.

Venkat Raman  24:51  

The research in general brings out a totally different dimension in students and, you know, shows them what they are capable of and, you know, compensate for maybe their coursework...?

Jim H  25:04  [What kinds of Students are good at Research]

Yeah, because people, people who I know and I've worked with at other institutions will will sort of reiterate this idea is that, you know, very often the best undergraduate researchers are not the a student. So they, they, they can, you know, they can be your average See, plus in terms in the classroom. And for whatever reason, you know, they shine when you get him into a lab or in the field, and engaging in projects, you can't predict how well someone is going to be going to do you know, with undergraduate research and how far they're going to go with it. Based on their grades, it just, it doesn't. I don't see any evidence to suggest that, that you can make that prediction based on you know, their GPA, it just, it just doesn't, doesn't happen, which is kind of interesting.

Venkat Raman  25:55  

Yeah, might be a good topic for undergraduate research somewhere.

Jim H  25:58  

Yeah.

Venkat Raman  26:03  

So So what's ahead? What do you if you look ahead, What do you see this entire network of community colleges doing with research?

Jim H  26:13  [What’s ahead for CCURI]

Well, it's interesting, I get that question a lot from from people, especially at the National Science Foundation, because they don't want to be giving us money forever. Right? They've, yeah, they're their goal is to sort of fun new ideas, and then hope that you are able to have success, but then be able to sustain that success. Right. And so when people ask me, Well, how are you? How are you going to sustain curry without the National Science Foundation? And I? My answer is, it's it's already sustainable. Every program that's that's, that's launched, and is operating with, you know, at this point, very little help from us, because they don't need our help anymore. Yeah, that's, that's how we sustain it is by continuing to help colleges get their programs off the ground. And what we've done now is I'm a co PI on a project from the NSF. It's the new National Center in biotechnology education. And we sort of the reason why I'm a coPI I in that project is because biotechnology is an area where we want to have some inroads, and start getting undergraduate research into programs that aren't necessarily transfer programs, that are programs that are typical, you know, your AAS degrees, two years of education get into a job. And we think there's going to, we think there's a lot of benefits that can be gained by having students engage in research. Even if they don't think they want to have a research career that they want to go into, you know, in right into the job market. And there's a lot of skills that you get from an undergraduate research experience, go beyond just being able to operate instruments and design experiments and analyze data. There's a lot of sort of professional skills that you can gain from just being engaged in in a research project.

Venkat Raman  27:58  

No, I think that's really great. I think, as you rightly said, that is pretty evergreen, this notion of taking research forward. And wish you all the luck and the best. No, I really think that you're doing great, great work. And this is really a wonderful thing that you're offering. Not just your students, but every, every student out there.

Venkat Raman  28:27  

What would your advice be to students who come into community college? about research? What What kind of skills? Do they need to be able to do research? Is that teachable? Or is that something you come work?

Jim H  28:42  [Skills Needed for Research]

I think I think it is, it is teachable. In terms of what i My recommendation for students that are going into a community college is to seek out those opportunities because that sometimes it's hard to find them if it's not across the entire institution. And, and look for those opportunities for yourself. And don't be afraid to, you know, knock on a door and say, Hey, I really would like to look for ways to get get engaged in a project. It doesn't have to be, you know, a complicated, massive, three semester research project. It could be something simple. But, but in terms of the skills, the most, the most important ones really are the ones that you wouldn't, well, you might not think about when you think about scientific research are just things like being able to work with somebody on a team, being able to communicate through your, you know, writing and being able to communicate ideas to other people and critical thinking skills, being able to solve problems. Being a risk taker, I mean, things like that, where those things some of those things are taught some of those things are sort of natural for people. And because all the other stuff like How to run this experiment or how to create a, you know, a protocol that you want to put in for your project. Those things, those things can come come later, because those are the ones that you're going to get by just being engaged in the project itself. Sure. And then the other thing is for faculty, I would say that, you know, there are faculty out there that are going to listen to this as is, don't think that it has to be something huge that you start, you know, build something small might, that red tail hawk project was not complicated. And it only had two students that were engaged in it and it but it but it was very transformative for those students. So it doesn't have to be something massive, right. But it was certainly was better than sitting in a lecture hall for an hour and 15 minutes and watch for PowerPoint. Presentations go by? It's way better than that. Yeah, yeah.

Venkat Raman  31:01  

Absolutely. Yeah. I was just thinking that there are over 5000 community colleges across the US. And so there's obviously a lot of opportunity and room for this undergraduate research to grow on all those campuses as well. So I think there's a lot of opportunity for you to, you know, make a mark. So I think this is this is great.

Jim H  31:25  

Yeah, well, I would have never thought we'd be at 100. And whatever 146 that we're at right now that we have in our network when I started with just the two students. So you know, it's been a it's been an incredible, incredibly fulfilling journey, I should say, for me, and for a lot of the people that I work with, which has been great.

Venkat Raman  31:50  

So, any closing thoughts? Jim, as we wind down here...

Jim H  31:55  [Research versus Teaching: A False Choice]

I think that, you know, the closing thought would be to not think of, and I and I sort of talk when I'm talking to new partners about this, really important for administrators to understand this as well, is that, you know, there's always been this dichotomy in higher education of research versus teaching, there's always been this, they've always been pitted against each other, right? That in community colleges have always been thought of places where there was you taught, but you didn't really do research, right? You're there. You weren't, you didn't have a research career, you had a teaching career. Right. But again, yeah, I always say that, that undergraduate research is like a tool in your, in your teacher's toolbox, right? It's an it's a, it's a way to engage students in a in a process of learning, in which in this case is, you know, process thinking around being a scientist. And so, in my mind, at this point in my career, I don't see them as, as two separate things, that, that if you're, if you're teaching science, then you're you should be doing research, and they should become, like completely intertwined with each other. Because I mean, that's, that's our jobs, we shouldn't be doing that. We're sort of we're sort of obligated to, to do that. And so I think this whole idea of teaching versus research is doesn't doesn't really make sense anymore, to me, and to a lot of people that that we've worked with.

Venkat Raman  33:22  

No, that's that's absolutely a great thought. And, and I guess you've shown that that is the case. So, Jim, thank you so much for taking the time and giving us a great overview on CCURI and all about undergraduate research, and I hope the listeners get a lot out of it, and do more research and I will certainly be in touch with you. But for now, take care.

Jim H  33:49  

Yeah, we tell them you know, anybody that's listening, if they want to see it, they can go to ccuri.us. And that's, that's our page for the network.

Venkat Raman  34:00  

No, absolutely. I'll put that on the notes as well. Okay, take care.

Jim H  34:04  

All right. Thank you very much.

Venkat Raman  34:06  

Yep. Bye.

—----

Venkat  34:12

Hi again!

Hope you enjoyed our podcast on CCURI - Community College UG Research Initiative with Professor James Hewlett of Finger Lakes Community College.

This is an inspiring story of how one person can make a difference.

Prof. Hewlett took the learnings from an initial blood sample of the red tail hawk and was able to bring UG Research to over 120 CC campuses with NSF’s backing.

Prof Hewlett gives us a great overview of CCURI, the need for undergraduate research at CC, How CCURI was born, The Impact it is having on other Community Colleges, the successes and finally advice for students to seek out opportunities at their CC.

To learn more about CCURI visit ccuri dot us (https://www.ccuri.us).

I hope this podcast inspires you to build the skills and pursue UG research.

For your questions or comments on this podcast, please email podcast at almamatters.io [podcast@almamatters.io] with the Subject: UG Research.

Thank you all so much for listening to our podcast today.

Transcripts for this podcast and previous podcasts are on almamatters.io forward slash podcasts [almamatters.io/podcasts].

To stay connected with us, Subscribe to Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or Spotify or visit anchor.fm forward slash almamatters [anchor.fm/almamatters] to check us out.

Till we meet again, take care and be safe.

Thank you!

Summary Keywords

Podcast for High Schoolers, Undergraduate Research Podcast, College Majors, US Colleges, College Podcast, High School Students, College-bound UG Research, undergraduate research, Finger Lakes Community College, Red-Tailed Hawk, CCURI, Community College Undergraduate Research Initiative


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