For the Spring 2024 semester, the Student Center for Research, Creativity, and Scholarship has awarded 28 students P
The Benefits of Teaching and Taking a CURE Course
Wed, 11/29/2023 - 11:02am
A Course Embedded Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE), is creative in design to improve how faculty present course content, to collaborate across disciplines, and to modify course activities in order for undergraduates to apply professional knowledge.
Collaborative departmental efforts between Dr. Roxanne Bourque (College of Education and Human Development) and Dr. Zachary Stein (Interim Assistant Dean of Technical Services/Assistant Professor in University Libraries) reframed course activities to extend traditional course content knowledge for EDCI 308 Children’s Literature. In order to expand an initial task of research to fill a missing gap for classroom instructional materials, they became cultural researchers of their own childhood stories. This is where the authenticity of learning becomes real to the learner. Creative scholarship supported preservice teachers to develop a deeper commitment to the future populations of children who they will teach, to be mindful of social justice and equity through cultural language, history, and a deeper understanding of regional life. Bourque states, “We must think beyond traditional measures to include a more robust experiential connection to support learning. A CURE presents an emergent model that may be applied to most undergraduate courses in business, education, sciences, the arts, and beyond.”
What began as a traditional Children’s Literature course, transformed into a rich opportunity for professionalism and creative scholarship. The problem: to explore a missing gap in Louisiana Children’s Literature, which led to an undergraduate semester task and cultural research of childhood experiences in south Louisiana.
