Kelly McDonald
California State University-Sacramento, CA·Education Research
The problems society faces now rarely sit inside one discipline, so STEM graduates need both varied perspectives and the habit of solving problems whose answers are not known in advance. Undergraduate research and internships build that habit, but those positions are limited in number and unevenly distributed among students.
- Fields
Education Research
Earth & Environmental Science
Biology
- Topics
course-based undergraduate research
authentic learning experiences
STEM education reform
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Sep 2026
What they work on
- Implement course-based Authentic Learning Experiences, in which students tackle questions with unknown outcomes as professionals do, across 67 courses at California State University, Sacramento and four Los Rios District community colleges.
- Build an interdisciplinary, faculty-led community of practice of more than 50 faculty to strengthen expertise in curriculum design and teaching methods and to support implementation of the new experiences.
- Examine how faculty from different disciplines and institution types collaborate to build, implement, and assess experiential STEM curricula, including across two-year and four-year institutions.
- Measure the impacts of experiential curricula on students from ten disciplines while generating new scientific knowledge about human impacts on Northern California's water ecosystems.
More about the research
This project asks whether the same experience can be delivered inside regular coursework, where every enrolled student reaches it, and whether faculty across different disciplines and institution types can be organized to make that happen.
Why it matters
Hands-on research experience is a known route into STEM careers, yet internships and lab positions reach only some students. By embedding authentic research into required courses at a state university and four community colleges, this work could widen access for students who would otherwise miss out, including transfer students, and produce evidence other institutions can use when redesigning curricula. The water-quality investigations also add data on human impacts on Northern California's waterways.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Nia Bauer
Arapahoe Community College, CO·Education Research
Develop course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) of variable length for biology courses and labs and for three non-biology courses, with a shared repository of curricula for in-person, hybrid and remote teaching.
Arthur Sikora
Nova Southeastern University, FL·Education Research
Identify the supports for and barriers to implementing and sustaining the BASIL biochemistry CURE across institution types, using faculty surveys, implementation plans and semi-structured interviews.
Mindy Reynolds
Washington College, MD·Education Research
Establish FAMNet, a structured co-mentoring network that pairs faculty experienced in evidence-based instructional practices (EBIPs) with faculty mentees across two-year and four-year colleges.
The school
California State University-Sacramento: 3 labs on PI Pages, $34M a year on research, 19 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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