Through the “Microbial March Madness”, students will learn about the specific environmental adaptations of the different microbes to develop and test their hypotheses about the environmental fitness of individual microbes. The Microbial March Madness CURE embraces the TTU love of NCAA basketball by allowing the students to prepare and experimentally test an NCAA-style March Madness bracket of microbes pitted against each other. The benefits of CUREs include enhancing the student's awareness of what it means to be a researcher, increasing their likeness to stay in STEM careers, and helping students discover their science identity. We additionally seek to assess whether our CURE assists in promoting a better understanding of complex topics covered in our upper-level microbiology electives lectures by comparing the knowledge and lab skills between students who are taking only a bacteria physiology lecture class, and students that are taking both classes: Bacteria Physiology and Microbial March Madness.
