By Victoria Brito

Dr. Chu-Lin Cheng

RIO GRANDE VALLEY, TEXAS – The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley will participate in a cooperative grant, along with the University of Colorado and Front Range Community College, designed to enhance undergraduate teaching in STEM fields.

The grant, “Collaborative Research: Promoting Research-based Instructional Methods for Enhancing and Reforming STEM Education,” or PRIMERS, is funded by Improving Undergraduate STEM Education, a National Science Foundation (NSF) initiative.

The primary goal of the PRIMERS project is to move undergraduate STEM instructors toward focusing on learner-centered instruction, the sort that fosters active learning by leveraging an existing evidence-based professional development program.

UTRGV investigators on this Collaborative Research project are:

• Chu-Lin Cheng, principal investigator and assistant professor of Water Resources and Applied Geosciences in the UTRGV School of Earth, Environmental and Marine Sciences. He has a dual appointment in Department of Civil Engineering in the UTRGV College of Engineering and Computer Science.
• Ming-Tsan Lu, co-PI and associate professor of Educational Research in the Department of Teaching and Learning in the College of Education and P-16 Integration.

“The goal is to help faculty develop courses based on a research-based instructional approach, which will be provided by the University of Colorado and modified to fit our needs,” Cheng said. 

“The modified University of Colorado model/experience can help UTRGV to integrate teaching and research as UTRGV aims to become an emerging research institute from its mainly teaching-dominated climate of the past.”

The project aims to strengthen teaching methods between all levels of faculty members and lecturers.

“The three-institution project involves three different institution types with different histories and traditions of supporting teaching practice, and an important goal of the project is to learn from one another to better promote research-based instruction in STEM courses at our three institutions,” Cheng said.

“We learn from each other through the research intensive universities and how the faculty incorporated research projects through their teachings, and we will modify that to fit our needs here at UTRGV. The colleagues in Colorado and myself are in geoscience or applied geoscience, and geoscience itself is a very interdisciplinary study. The model used in geoscience at other institutes in the nation can be expanded and exchanged to all STEM fields,” he said.

The NSF grant carries an award of $3 million over five years. UTRGV’s portion is $635,000, with the remaining funds going to the University of Colorado and Front Range Community College.

Cheng said the grant can benefit UTRGV in many ways, like supporting faculty with more research-intensive teaching approaches that involve students and enhance faculty student interactions.

PRIMERS also hopes to nurture and promote new collaborative and innovative research opportunities through its events and activities between participants, faculty and colleagues from STEMS fields at UTRGV and partner institutions.