Undergraduate research is a high-impact educational practice that can provide students with many benefits— including valuable career skills, a greater interest in and understanding of our discipline, enhanced critical thinking skills, and self-confidence. However, one of the challenges imposed by the recent COVID-19 pandemic has been providing meaningful research opportunities for students who cannot be physically present on campus. In this session, I will share my experiences in engaging students in undergraduate research during the pandemic via a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) that I teach at the University of Florida. In this course, students work in collaborative teams on a shared, novel research project, through which they generate publishable data and thereby contribute new knowledge to the field of entomology. CUREs provide many of the same benefits as a traditional 1-on-1 research assistantship, while also potentially reaching a wider audience of students– including many that are currently underrepresented in academia. I will discuss resources for designing and implementing CUREs in entomology, as well as specific strategies for adapting CUREs to an online or hybrid format. This approach can help make research in our field more accessible to students even after the pandemic is over.
