More Merrimack College students will soon be able to take advantage of the College’s growing research infrastructure and learn research skills and techniques earlier in their college careers.
As part of the College’s Teaching Excellence Advancement Challenge (TEACH) initiative, faculty are examining ways to get more undergraduate students immersed in research starting as soon as their first year.
“We want to give students those opportunities right from the get-go because of the impact it could have on their goals and pursuits both at Merrimack and beyond,” said Jimmy Franco, associate dean in the School of Arts and Sciences and one of the faculty creating models for undergraduate research experience. “The way classes are traditionally set up is students don’t get to work in the state-of-art labs until they are upperclassmen. So we are working to create those experiences for students starting in their introductory classes.”
Launched in 2024, TEACH brings together faculty, librarians from McQuade Library and staff at the Center for Teaching & Learning Innovation, Development & Design to combine expertise to develop new ideas and methods on how Merrimack students are taught. In addition to undergraduate research experiences, also known as CURE, TEACH cohorts are examining support for active pedagogies in larger classes, harnessing generative AI to advance learning and developing novel interdisciplinary concentrations for the new general education core.
Franco said the TEACH-CURE working group is identifying Merrimack faculty who would redesign their course curricula to include more hands-on research opportunities. The plan is to have a pilot group in place for the fall 2025 semester.
“We are working to make this available in different disciplines and throughout Merrimack’s five schools, so there will be research experiences in the life sciences and engineering, but also the liberal arts and computer sciences,” Franco said.
The research experiences developed through TEACH mean more Merrimack students will be able to take advantage of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center lab in Palmisano Hall, which features state-of-the-art research instrumentation.
“For first-year and newer students, our hope is these research opportunities will help to put their larger academic experiences into perspective and make the class a little more exciting and tangible,” said Franco. “So even if students don’t end up pursuing chemistry-based research, at least they have a chance to take a problem, go into the lab and work through the semester to solve it.”
