Current CURE Offerings

Instructor: Dr. Li Xu (lxu@arizona.edu)

Schedule: TBD. *Students are encouraged to participate in the meetings but they are not required. Meetings will be recorded in Zoom and will be available through D2L. 

Credits: 3

Description: Data literacy and data presentation are key skills that are prerequisites for data-driven professions. In this class, students will learn how to understand, question, and work with data from various public community data resources. Students will study the nature of data; apply quantitative techniques to analyze data; design and present data visualizations; and interpret their research findings. Statistical analyses, data processing techniques, and software utilization will be presented. Students will be prepared to ask important questions and solve problems from the perspectives of data science and public health. 

Prerequisites: None

Instructor: Dr. Bryan Carter (bryancarter@arizona.edu)

Schedule: Varies

Credits: 1-3

Description: Students will join in a theoretical and hands-on practical introduction to the Digital Humanities and advanced technologies used in the field (augmented reality, virtual reality, volumetric, 360 imaging, etc.). This knowledge will be applied in a real-world project with a local cultural center as students collaborate to explore how to undertake critical, embedded Digital Humanities partnerships in community settings with vulnerable populations. 

Prerequisites: None

Notes: Students interested in enrolling should email Dr. Bryan Carter at bryancarter@arizona.edu.

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Instructor: Dr. Li Xu (lxu@arizona.edu)

Schedule: Asynchronous online with optional weekly meetings (day/time TBD)

Credits: 3

Description: This course will lay a foundation for students to understand how to process, analyze, and visualize data. Topics include data collection and integration, exploratory data analysis, statistical inference and modeling, machine learning, and data visualization.  The emphasis of the course topics will be placed on integration and synthesis of concepts and their application to solving problems.  Students will explore these topics using software tools.

Prerequisites: APCV 302 and APCV 320. Prior Python programming experience is required. Must be a CAST student. 

Instructors: Dr. Na Zuo (nazuo@arizona.edu) and Dr. Satheesh Aradhyula (satheesh@arizona.edu)

Schedule: Mondays & Wednesdays 4:00pm-5:15pm, in-person

Credits: 3

Description: An exciting research opportunity! Join us in authentic projects exploring the Willingness to Pay (WTP) for food products like beer or tortillas, where economics meets innovation in the food and beverage industry. Collaborate with Economists, Food Scientists, and Local Food Entrepreneurs to understand consumer preferences and the factors influencing pricing decisions in the food sector. 

This course gives students hands-on experience with research in the broad area of food and resource economics. Students practice collecting, assembling, and analyzing data for empirical work. Using real world data, students learn to answer important research questions. As a university designated CURE (Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences) course, this course helps students build quantitative skills with authentic research experience.

Prerequisites: AREC 239 (Introduction to Statistics and Data Analysis) or an equivalent statistics course.

Instructors: Dr. Wendy Moore (wmoore@arizona.edu) and Raine Ikagawa (rikagawa@arizona.edu)

Schedule: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:30am-10:45am, in-person

Credits: 3

Description: The Sonoran Desert Region is home to more species of native bees than any other region of the world. In this course our main research goal will be focused on discovering and documenting the diversity of Tucson's native bees. This course provides an introductory research experience that immerses students in the process of discovering, describing, and classifying biodiversity. They explore biodiversity research using cutting edge laboratory, field, museum (curatorial), and bioinformatics techniques. The data they collect will be published and shared freely with both the scientific community and the general public. 

Prerequisites: MCB181L, MCB181R, ECOL182L, and ECOL182R. 

Instructors: Dr. Kat Cheng (katcheng@arizona.edu) 

Schedule: Mondays and Wednesdays, 9am-10:15am, in-person

Credits: 3

Description: Basic concepts essential to the comprehension of research in education, including measurement principles and descriptive statistics.

Prerequisites: None

Instructors: Dr. Katrina Henry (katrinahenry@arizona.edu) and Charlie Cunningham (ccunningham7@arizona.edu)

Schedule: Wednesdays 2:00pm-4:50pm

Credits: 1 credit

Description: The critical zone is Earth's skin - extending from the top of the tree canopy to the bottom of the groundwater zone.  Movement of mass and energy maintain a chemical and thermodynamic disequilibrium, resulting in the ecosystems and their services found throughout the critical zone.  In this lab illustrative activities and quantitative explorations lead students to describing the critical zone. Laboratory activities complement ENVS 270 lecture topics. Designed to accompany ENVS 270 Critical Zone Science.

Prerequisites: Students must have previously completed ENVS 270 Critical Zone Science lecture or be concurrently enrolled for spring semester.

Instructor: Dr. Soumaya Belmecheri (sbelmecheri@arizona.edu)

Schedule: TBD

Credits: 3 credits

Description: The Cascadia Subduction Zone is a 1,100 km fault along the US western seaboard that runs from British Columbia through northern California. The fault last ruptured in the year 1700 and was dated using trees killed during the earthquake that had preserved in coastal marshes. When the Cascadia Subduction Zone ruptures again, the magnitude 9 earthquake and associated tsunamis (destructive ocean waves) will devastate the Pacific Northwest in what will be the most catastrophic natural disaster in the history of the United States. There is therefore a critical need to understand the intervals between earthquakes along the Cascadia Subduction Zone, and trees may unravel that history. In this class, we will look for evidence of a suspected earthquake in the 1480s using trees killed by the 1700 earthquake. If an earthquake occurred in the 1480s, it would likely affect the growth patterns in these trees that were susceptible to damage or death during the 1700 earthquake. This information will be used by geologists to better understand Cascadia earthquake history and inform seismic risk in the US Pacific Northwest.

Prerequisites: None

Instructor: Laura Horley (lhorley@arizona.edu) 

Schedule: Mondays and Wednesdays 12:30pm-1:45pm, in-person

Credits: 3

Description: This is a dynamic service-learning course where students investigate notions of community and civic engagement through the lens of a social scientist, community members, and non-profit leaders. Students are asked to engage in service-learning pedagogy with real-world practice in this hands-on experiential learning class. Students will spend time understanding systematic social issues and structured inequalities with a non-profit community partner. Students will work on an interdisciplinary Honors Civic Engagement Team (HCET) to address and respond to social issues impacting marginalized communities. Students should expect to spend about 45 hours on community-based projects that the host organization often would be unable to complete with their own resources. Students will spend time unveiling their personal values and identities to better understand solutions to social issues plaguing society including racism, sexism, classism, and other forms of bias through reflections, readings, discussions and academic inquiry. Students will develop an understanding of their long-term social responsibility in responding to community-based social issues through the lenses of a social scientist, a non-profit leader, and a community member.

Prerequisites: Must be an Honors student

Instructor: Dr. Amy Fountain (avf@arizona.edu) 

Schedule: Asynchronous online

Credits: 1-3

Description: Students will join a community-based language technology development project, the Coeur d’Alene Online Language Resource Center (COLRC), as an example of a community lead language technology development project that focuses on the needs of a low-resource, minoritized language community. Depending on their skills and interests, participating students will enroll for 1 to 3 credits, at a course level (299, 399, 499) appropriate to their experience, and be assigned to assist in the development and deployment process. The project supports students who wish to develop skills in linguistic analysis and language activism, along with at least one of the following technical skills: coding for frontend, backend, rest interfaces, and scripting (javascript, python); database development (postgres, graphQL); and/or natural language processing (ingest, tokenization, annotation tasks using lum.ai/odinson libraries). Interested students should have at least some familiarity with and enjoyment of coding, but need not have significant experience or expertise in these areas. Students who are members of minoritized or low resource language communities will bring particularly valuable experience and expertise to this work, but any undergraduate student is welcome to participate

Prerequisites: None

Notes: Students interested in enrolling should email Dr. Amy Fountain at avf@arizona.edu.

Instructors: Dr. Frans Tax (fetax@arizona.edu) and Dr. Susan Hester (sdhester@arizona.edu)

Schedule: Mondays and Wednesdays 11:00am-12:00pm, Fridays TBD

Credits: 3

Description: This course is designed for juniors, particularly transfer students who have not participated in university research up to this point. The course will give students the opportunity to participate in an ongoing research project that seeks to understand the molecular basis of how plant (Arabidopsis) roots respond to their environment and different nutrient levels. Students will conduct a research project on self-selected environmental factors; developing projects to understand how plants regulate the growth of their roots. In addition to participating in research, students will learn about the undergraduate research ecosystem at the UA campus by exploring and applying for potential research opportunities. At the end of the class, students will have cultivated research skills that will make them competitive applicants for summer research programs and graduate school

Prerequisites: MCB181L/R, ECOL182L/R, CHEM151L/R, and CHEM152L/R

Notes: Geared towards transfer students in their 3rd year of studies

Instructor: Dr. Jennie Gubner (jgubner@arizona.edu)

Schedule: Tuesdays 9:30am-11:50am

Credits: 3

Description: How can music promote health and wellness in our lives and communities across the lifespan? For years, ethnomusicologists have been studying music around the world as a form of healing and a vehicle for community building and identity formation. One of the most important ways ethnomusicologists do research is by learning directly with and from individuals and communities through interviews, observant participation, and thoughtful engagement in communities of practice. In this interdisciplinary, hands-on, fieldwork course, we will explore the relationship between music and health through the creation of collaborative, community-based digital storytelling projects. Working in teams, students in this course will meet with individuals from diverse backgrounds from across the Tucson area to learn about their musical preferences and practices, document their musical life stories, and work to map the musical spaces and activities that have brought and continue to bring meaning, wellness, and health to their lives. To raise awareness about how music can be used to build and strengthen healthy communities, the stories students gather will be collected and shared as a growing creative toolkit to be shared with community members and healthcare providers.

Prerequisites: None

Instructor: Dr. Martha Bhattacharya (marthab1@arizona.edu)

Schedule: Tuesdays 9:30am-10:30am, additional discussion days/times vary

Credits: 

Description: VIP-CUREs are research experiences where students work in teams to make discoveries while earning credit. As a group, our objective in this VIP-CURE is to predict and test candidate brain proteins participating in neuron-glia communication, aging and neurodegenerative disease. Students will learn computational approaches for "big data" analysis to generate a list of gene candidates, followed by the evaluation of these candidates in Drosophila (fruit flies) with learning and memory or locomotor behavioral readouts. Students will gain real research experience using hand-on techniques and will contribute to new knowledge about the way neurons and glia communicate in health and disease. In addition to technical skills and knowledge, students develop professional skills such as technical writing, communication, and teamwork. Students may take this course in multiple semesters and continue on projects or choose new teams each semester to develop parallel skills. More information can be found here.

Prerequisites: MCB181L, MCB181R, ECOL182L, and ECOL182R. Concurrent enrollment or equivalent AP credit are acceptable

Notes: Applications for SP25 have already closed.

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Instructors: Dr. Jen Teske (teskeja@arizona.edu) and Dr. Jennifer Ravia (jravia@arizona.edu)

Schedule: Wednesdays 1:00pm-3:50pm

Credits: 3

Description: The integrated stress response (IRS) is a ubiquitous cellular pathway that regulates protein synthesis and is associated with many chronic diseases. Animal models indicate that abnormal behavior (diet, physical activity and sleep) disrupts regulatory proteins in the IRS within several tissues, but it’s unclear if the same response occurs in humans and if the proteins can be detected in a biofluid (saliva or urine). The purpose of this class is to determine if IRS proteins can be detected in biofluids and if they are associated with diet quality, physical activity levels, and sleep. To do this, students will participate in data collection, protein extraction and quantification, lab assays, data visualization, data analysis and create a poster to summarize the data collected during the project. This is an entry level class, where class time and outside activities will be used to introduce and discuss these activities sufficiently to develop student self-efficacy with laboratory procedures. At the end of the course, students will be able to describe a research project from start to finish and effectively communicate the results of the research.

This short course will examine current, rapidly changing topics of immediate relevance to Nutritional Sciences.  The topic selected will be presented from different perspectives incorporating cutting edge basic, clinical and translational science and will provide information that addresses the prevention and treatment of a nutrition condition where appropriate.

Prerequisites: None

Instructor: Dr. Rae Dachille (raedachille@arizona.edu)

Schedule: Tuesdays 12:30pm-1:45, hybrid (flex in-person)

Credits: 3

Description: This course is designed to offer tools for understanding religious and cultural diversity within healthcare settings, which includes consideration of religious patients, religious healthcare workers, faith-based healthcare institutions, and the impact of religious communities on healthcare laws and services. To develop skills for navigating intercultural differences, students will practice applying academic approaches to religion to health-related case studies.

Prerequisites: None