The college educational experience is being redefined by a new federal pilot program in which UCLA is participating. Instead of sitting in lecture classes and reading textbooks, UCLA life sciences undergraduates will conduct new research in laboratory courses.

"No one will know ahead of time what they will find; it will be their own original work — a college education for the 21st century," said Erin Sanders-Lorenz, academic coordinator for the UCLA Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics and an instructor for undergraduate laboratory courses in microbiology, virology and microbial genomics. "Instead of memorizing facts, students will learn for themselves, think like scientists and apply their knowledge to a scientific problem. Science doesn't mean as much until you roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty."

"Normally, this kind of research would be done by graduate students," said Gaston Pfluegl, academic coordinator for UCLA's Division of Life Sciences and director of the life sciences core curriculum. "Undergraduates will not do canned experiments; they will have to set up an experiment and think. They will learn that research is not like in a textbook, where everything is already figured out. They will do an experiment where we don't even know what the result will be."

The pilot program is run by the U.S. Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute (JGI), which is producing the Genomic Encyclopedia of Bacteria and Archaea. Many of the microorganisms the institute is studying are critical to advancing research at the frontiers of bioenergy, carbon cycling and bioremediation — areas of key importance to the Energy Department's mission. Increasingly, these samples are isolated from extreme environments where hundreds of species may be present. Their identities and biochemical roles in either disrupting or maintaining those particular environmental niches remain cryptic until their genome sequence information is generated, assembled and annotated. This emerging discipline is known as metagenomics.

Knowledge from the genomic encyclopedia may also be useful in the development of automobile biofuels, which require microorganisms, said Sanders-Lorenz, who added that microorganisms have the potential to help combat global warming by promoting the growth or decay of plants that retain carbon. In addition, she said, microbes can potentially help to feed the world by fertilizing crops without using chemicals.

UCLA, one of 12 universities selected for the pilot program, will adopt one microorganism for students to analyze. UCLA undergraduates will use bioinformatics — a biological research method that involves the use of sophisticated, high-speed computers — to analyze DNA sequences and protein data and to search for genes that encode proteins. The students will also attempt to determine the function of proteins, including novel ones, and may discover new genes for the microorganism.

"Undergraduates will contribute to the genomic encyclopedia," Sanders-Lorenz said.

At least three UCLA courses will participate during the first year, with plans for the program to rapidly expand within the life sciences. Pfluegl will teach genomics laboratory courses during the winter and spring quarters, and Sanders-Lorenz will teach a microbiology honors course in spring, as part of the pilot program.

Sanders-Lorenz said UCLA intends to integrate the program into as many life sciences courses as possible by 2008–09. Some 600 students a year take courses in microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics, and she hopes that all of them will participate in the program, as well as students from other life sciences courses, totaling perhaps 2,000 UCLA undergraduates per year or more.

If successful, the program will expand nationally as well.

Pfluegl believes the program will help students think critically about science, which will benefit them regardless of their career choices.

"Students who go into non-science fields still have to make informed decisions about stem cell research or global warming and understand the scientific method," he said.

Sanders-Lorenz has been interested in innovative teaching methods, with an emphasis on active learning, since she came to UCLA in 2005.

"Instead of students passively listening to fact-filled lectures, the students learn more when they are actively engaged in thinking, coming up with solutions and learning concepts on their own," she said. "Research-based laboratory courses promote active learning, which is much more reflective of what science is. In this program, there are no predestined results. Students can't count on us to give them the right answer, and even if we did, that's not what science really is. When you discover something new, there's an excitement that drives you to work even harder."

"Among our most important goals at JGI is to engage undergraduates as scientists in DoE mission-relevant research," said Cheryl Kerfeld, head of the Joint Genome Institute's new education program.

As an undergraduate at DePaul University in Chicago, Sanders-Lorenz worked in a professor's laboratory, comparing families of green algae and conducting DNA sequencing of a gene for multiple algae in a molecular botany laboratory.

"I started reading scientific literature as part of my research project; I was given the tools and had to figure it out myself," she recalled. "That's what inspired me to go on in science and pursue graduate work."

Sanders-Lorenz will attend a JGI workshop on Oct. 18 and 19 to further plan the first year of the program.

The Joint Genome Institute, which is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science, unites the expertise of five national laboratories — Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge and Pacific Northwest — along with the Stanford Human Genome Center, to advance genomics in support of the Energy Department's mission related to clean energy generation and environmental characterization and cleanup. The institute's Walnut Creek, Calif., Production Genomics Facility provides integrated sequencing and computational analysis that enable systems-based scientific approaches to these challenges. For more information, visit www.jgi.doe.gov.

UCLA is California's largest university, with an enrollment of nearly 37,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The UCLA College of Letters and Science and the university's 11 professional schools feature renowned faculty and offer more than 300 degree programs and majors. UCLA is a national and international leader in the breadth and quality of its academic, research, health care, cultural, continuing education and athletic programs. Four alumni and five faculty have been awarded the Nobel Prize.

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