Summary

Since 2014, a highly successful biology and marine science group capstone course (BIO/MSCI430) in which students conduct authentic, externally funded research studying the physiological effects of climate change on rockfishes. Students learn how to prepare rockfish tissue samples for next generation sequencing and analyze the massive amounts of sequence data generated from the technique using bioinformatics tools. In 2014, data from the first year of this course was incorporated in a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant proposal that was subsequently funded, bringing ~$300K to CSUMB. This data was also included in a peer-reviewed publication in the journal PLOS ONE this year that includes five CSUMB co-authors, including four students. The NSF grant has helped offset the costs of supplies in my capstone course, but it will expire in 2018. I propose to use Faculty Support Grant (FSG) funds to help sustain this course for years to come by developing a tool (a targeted “RockfishSeq” panel) that will allow students to gain more hands-on experience by sequencing samples in-house at CSUMB by leveraging our new Illumina MiSeq Sequencer.

Student Involvement

Currently one student (Biology Major) is working on this project.

Broader Significance

An ongoing record of effectively integrating authentic research into the classroom and data collected in future courses which is likely to result in additional publications and external funding opportunities.