The Path to Research Success (Biomed Science Edition)
Small Bites - 1 Credit Hour - UHON 375

Instructor(s): Jason Moore

Course Description

Research… Pushing back the bounds of human knowledge/experience. It lies at the centre of a university’s mission. It provides huge benefits for participating students, even if they don’t end up as researchers. It is the engine by which our society develops. But how do you become a researcher? And how do you do it right?

As an undergraduate with interest in participating in research it is often hard to know where to start and most students find a research placement during their later years at university through luck rather than judgement. And by this point it’s too late to reap many of the rewards of extended research participation. This course aims to address those concerns. You will learn what research is in an academic setting and why it’s beneficial to participate. You’ll be trained to be an ethical researcher and then you will have the chance to learn about some of the incredible biomedical research that is being undertaken on North Campus from the researchers themselves. At the end of the course, there will be a matching session that will provide students with the chance to join the lab of one of the participating researchers next semester, participate in a genuine research project, and earn 6CR that can count towards your Honors credential!

The course will meet once per week in the Honors College Forum. For the first four weeks of class you will be presented with readings around the nature of academic research and its ethical undertaking that will serve as prompts for in-class discussion and written exercises. For the remainder of the course you will be hearing from researchers from the School of Medicine about the incredible cutting-edge research that they’re carrying out. Each of these researchers will have places available in their labs for undergraduates to carry out research next semester (for Honors credit!). Students will be expected to ask questions of the presenters, submit weekly summaries of the researchers’ projects that are presented, and an end-of-semester reflection describing what they’ve learnt about academic research in the biomedical sciences and how their understanding/approach to research has changed as a result of this course.

Texts

Select articles from the literature will be provided

Requirements

Students should be interested in participating in biomedical science research moving forward in their career at UNM. No prior experience is required.

About the Instructor(s): Jason Moore

Jason Moore received his undergraduate degrees and Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and subsequently spent time teaching and researching at Texas A&M University and Dartmouth College. He is most interested in understanding how organisms interacted with each other and their environment during the geological past - bringing fossils to life! His recent research has focused on understanding how ancient mammals respond to climate change, the reproductive ecology of dinosaurs, and the nature of the impactor involved in the extinction of the dinosaurs. One of his major foci at UNM is the development and expansion of undergraduate research opportunities and he won the UNM Faculty-Mentored Research award in collaboration with his undergraduate student, Ian Hutchinson, in 2025.