A Summer Program Designed to Educate College Students for Careers in Bioinformatics

Krilowicz, B I; Johnston, W. W.; Sharp, Sandra B.; Warter-Perez, Nancy; Momand, Jamil

doi:10.1187/cbe.06-03-0150

Cited by 12 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…This heavily multidisciplinary nature is a challenge for most departments, because they are generally unified by discipline, and faculty cross-appointment is not the norm. Cooperation and planning involving multiple departments are necessary to provide quality education to form bioinformatics professionals [5,6,[8][9][10][11]. This limits the offering of bioinformatics as major, minor, option, or emphasis in many universities.…”

Section: Bioinformatics Is In Demandmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There has been a great deal of debate on how to teach bioinformatics in the literature [4,[6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. This author believes that the best approach is to build layers of skills, beginning with a practical course that gives students familiarity with current databases and computer applications.…”

Section: ''Toolkit'' Bioinformatics Is the First Stepmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our implementation of this course uses an eight (8) core (dual quad-core) Dell PowerEdge 1950 server running Linux with 8 GB of memory and 320 GB of disk space. This server is capable of handling at least 13 concurrent students actively using the scientific applications required for performing a laboratory exercise.…”

Section: Hardwarementioning

confidence: 99%

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A portable bioinformatics course for upper‐division undergraduate curriculum in sciences

Floriano

2008

Biochem Molecular Bio Educ

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This article discusses the challenges that bioinformatics education is facing and describes a bioinformatics course that is successfully taught at the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, to the fourth year undergraduate students in biological sciences, chemistry, and computer science. Information on lecture and computer practice topics, free for academic use software and web links required for the laboratory exercises and student surveys for two instances of the course, is presented. This course emphasizes hands-on experience and focuses on developing practical skills while providing a solid knowledge base for critically applying these skills. It is designed in blocks of 1-hour lecture followed by 2 hours of computer laboratory exercises, both covering the same general topic, for a total of 30 hours of lecture and 60 hours of computer practice. The heavy computational aspect of this course was designed to use a single multiprocessor computer server running Linux, accessible from laptops through Virtual Network Computing sessions. The laptops can be either provided by the institution or owned by the individual students. This configuration avoids the need to install and maintain bioinformatics software on each laptop. Only a single installation is required for most bioinformatics software on the Linux server. The content of this course and its software/hardware configuration are well suited for institutions with no dedicated computer laboratory. This author believes that the same model can be successfully implemented in other institutions, especially those who do not have a strong instructional computer technology support such as community colleges and small universities.

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Section: Bioinformatics Is In Demandmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: ''Toolkit'' Bioinformatics Is the First Stepmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A portable bioinformatics course for upper‐division undergraduate curriculum in sciences

Floriano

2008

Biochem Molecular Bio Educ

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“…Research experiences for undergraduates can be provided under different settings including advanced courses and seminars, senior projects, honor thesis, and summer/academic-year undergraduate research programs [5,6,9,10]. The research experiences benefit the students engaged in research as well as the faculty and host institutions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Top issues in providing successful undergraduate research experiences

Bischof

Furst

Raicu

et al. 2011

Proceedings of the 42nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

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Undergraduate research is becoming increasingly common in colleges and universities, and, to support this, there is a need to have best practices and forums for promoting exchange of ideas. In particular, a working group at a recent National Science Foundation (NSF) Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) sites PI's meeting identified four important issues in undergraduate research: 1) how to design a good research project, 2) how to prepare students for research, 3) how to measure outcomes of undergraduate research and 4) incentives for undergraduates to publish as result of their participation in research.The panelists have all served as PIs or Co-PIs on NSF REU projects in computing and have mentored many undergraduates in a large variety of research projects both in REU settings as well as during the regular academic year. They will each address one of the issues identified above, and share their expertise in addressing the issue, providing solid guidance to anyone interested in promoting undergraduate research. A significant amount of time will be set aside for audience participation and discussion. BACKGROUNDIn the past ten years many universities have significantly changed their general education to address some of today's most intellectual challenges, such as changing demographics of the undergraduate population, shifts in knowledge, technological advances, and increasing emphasis on "transferable" skills. Most of the changes addressing these challenges relate to increased writing (65% of the research universities), preparing students for global environment (60%), fostering interdisciplinary programs (53.4%), and enhancing and facilitating research experiences (39%) [4].Research experiences for undergraduates can be provided under different settings including advanced courses and seminars, senior projects, honor thesis, and summer/academic-year undergraduate research programs [5,6,9,10]. The research experiences benefit the students engaged in research as well as the faculty and host institutions. Students expand upon their personal/professional skills, intellectual preparations, professional socialization, and also enhance their preparation for graduate school along with career clarification and confirmation [7]. On the institutional side, involving undergraduates in research also helps with the faculty development and potentially even student retention [1][2][3]8].To provide these benefits to the students and to the academic institutions, the faculty mentors have to design good strategies for overcoming various challenges such as insufficient student preparation/background to work on specific projects in a certain amount of time, misunderstanding of the research process, and lack of interaction with peers, all of them coupled with demanding faculty research agendas that impose high expectations on the undergraduate students' work. Therefore, this panel will focus on how the lessons learned by the panelists in mentoring undergraduate research ...

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“…14–23 Summer programs have been shown to be efficacious in helping students step into bioinformatics careers. 24 Strategies to mitigate problems surrounding this educational divide are paramount to having an efficacious program that trains successful students.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Building the Next Generation of Quantitative Biologists

et al. 2013

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Many colleges and universities across the globe now offer bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees, along with certificate programs in bioinformatics. While there is some consensus surrounding curricula competencies, programs vary greatly in their core foci, with some leaning heavily toward the biological sciences and others toward quantitative areas. This allows prospective students to choose a program that best fits their interests and career goals. In the digital age, most scientific fields are facing an enormous growth of data, and as a consequence, the goals and challenges of bioinformatics are rapidly changing; this requires that bioinformatics education also change. In this workshop, we seek to ascertain current trends in bioinformatics education by asking the question, “What are the core competencies all bioinformaticians should have at the end of their training, and how successful have programs been in placing students in desired careers?”

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A Summer Program Designed to Educate College Students for Careers in Bioinformatics

Cited by 12 publications

References 15 publications

A portable bioinformatics course for upper‐division undergraduate curriculum in sciences

A portable bioinformatics course for upper‐division undergraduate curriculum in sciences

Top issues in providing successful undergraduate research experiences

Building the Next Generation of Quantitative Biologists

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