Our department tries to make undergraduate research experiences available to all interested students, but it is not always possible for a variety of reasons. Because of this, Professors Muna and Rizk have integrated research-based experiences into their upper-level laboratory courses so that all students get more than the cook-book type laboratory experiments that are the tradition in many laboratory courses. Muna recently published information about the course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) that she provides to her students in her instrumentation course CHEM-C 410. Her article describes the students' use of microwave plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (MP-AES) to measure lead content in soil samples. Muna received a lot of positive feedback from students regarding this project. Several students who did not have time for a full research experience, or were nervous to initiate research with a faculty member, were thankful to have this short research experience in class. You can find her article in in the Journal of Chemical Education.
