CUREing the General Physics Laboratory: Desiderata, Design, and Preliminary Results

In this talk, I will describe our Fall 2022/Spring 2023 implementation of a Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) lab for General Physics students at St. Mary's University in San Antonio, TX. CUREs replace standard undergraduate laboratories with authentic research experiences. In designing our lab, we were guided by some desirable properties of a CURE lab. These included having a research topic that was understandable to the students, participation as collaborators in a larger research effort, and a chance to repeat and iteratively refine measurements and methods. Two important design considerations ended up being the lab time frame (one three hour block each week) and the large number of participants (50 students) compared to a typical research mentorship program. I will describe the desiderata of an introductory general physics CURE lab, our particular implementation, and some preliminary results from the first semester on student interest and attitudes.