Using a Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CURE) Model to Enhance the Research Interest of Health Professional and Biomedical Science Students

This project is founded on three understandings: (1) Health professional research training is critical for strengthening our health system and services; graduates need to have research-oriented competencies to address priority health needs. According to graduate employment rates, nearly all medical laboratory science (MLS) students work in hospital laboratories immediately after their undergraduate studies. Thus, it is very difficult to persuade our students to pursue postgraduate studies due to attractive remuneration offered by medical laboratories, which is one of the reasons for the succession gap in our disciplines, i.e., the challenge to recruit healthcare researchers as faculty members. (2) Traditional “cookbook” laboratory experiments cannot mimic “authentic” research experience that enhances creativity, improves critical thinking, and retains and uses learned information preparing learners for real world challenges. (3) Traditional one-on-one research guidance for all undergraduate students (UGs) is impractical. It is usually only available to a few outstanding students who have received prestigious research mentorships. For example, very few students can benefit from our faculty summer research studentship scheme (20 quota/year).