A Carbohydrate/Lipid Research Project for Organic and Analytical CURE Laboratories: Reactions and Recordkeeping

Abstract

Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (or CUREs) are able to teach students laboratory skills while engaging them in novel research. The first part of this thesis aims to demonstrate the development of a feasible research project for implementation in organic chemistry II and quantitative analysis CURE courses. The goal of the research project was to develop effective, glucose-based cryoprotectants. While the synthesis and analysis of three tethered glucose molecules – glu4glu, glu8glu, and glu12glu – are shown, they were not expected to yield better cryoprotectants, but to form the basis of a research project for CURE students. The second part of this thesis aims to analyze the language and organization of CURE laboratory notebooks in comparison to traditional and undergraduate research notebooks to gain insight on the effectiveness of a CURE on engaging students in a research setting. The organization and language usage of CURE notebooks were found to align more closely with notebooks of experienced researchers than with notebooks of traditional (non-research based) teaching laboratories, suggesting that students learn the language of the scientific community more effectively through literature and discussion rather than through a laboratory manual.