Today’s undergraduate students in Biology frequently face many hurdles in the path toward academic success. Some of these hurdles include low self-confidence and a lack of a sense of belonging. These hurdles can be particularly intimidating for underrepresented minority and first-generation students. We proposed to address these specific hurdles with the development of a laboratory course that would introduce young students to authentic research and help build student camaraderie. The HCU biology department received an NSF grant to develop a sophomore-level laboratory course to accompany Cell and Molecular Biology. This course is taken as the third and final of our prerequisite courses. Students in the laboratory course participate in both an authentic research experience and in student learning teams designed to engage in lecture material. Students in the course participate in identical pre-lab and post-lab surveys with nine questions related to confidence in their own laboratory capabilities and ten questions related to their sense of belonging. Analysis of the survey data shows consistently higher scores in the post-lab survey compared to the pre-lab survey. This trend is even more pronounced for students in the underrepresented minority and first-generation groups. Our data suggest that the lab course is achieving the intended outcomes of increasing student self-confidence as well as sense of belonging.
