In the Undergraduate School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) at the University of Virginia (UVa), there are few opportunities for undergraduate students to teach, let alone develop, an introductory course for their major. As two undergraduate engineering students (D. N. Tavakol and C. J. Broshkevitch), we were among the first students to take advantage of a new initiative at UVa SEAS to offer student-led courses. As part of this new program, we designed a 1000-level, 1-credit, pass-fail course entitled Introduction to Research in Regenerative Medicine. During a student’s first year at the University, opportunities to build research skills and gain exposure to topics within the field of the biomedical sciences are relatively rare, so, to fill this gap, we focused our course on teaching primarily freshman undergraduate students how to synthesize and contextualize scientific literature, covering both basic science and clinical applications. At the end of the course, students self-reported increased confidence in reading and discussing scientific papers and review articles. The critical impact of this course lies not only in an early introduction to the popularized field of regenerative medicine, but also encouragement for younger students to participate in research early on and to appreciate the value of interdisciplinary interactions. The teaching model can be extended for implementation of student-taught introductory courses across diverse undergraduate major tracks at an institution.
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机译：在弗吉尼亚大学（UVa）的工程与应用科学本科学院（SEAS）中，本科生很少有机会教他们的专业入门课程，更不用说开发入门课程了。作为两名工程学本科生（D. N. Tavakol和C. J. Broshkevitch），我们是最早利用UVa SEAS的一项新计划提供由学生主导的课程的学生之一。作为该新计划的一部分，我们设计了1000级，1项学分及格的不及格课程，名为“再生医学研究导论”。在大学就读的第一年，相对很少有机会培养研究技能和接触生物医学领域的话题，因此，为了弥补这一空白，我们将课程重点放在主要针对新生的本科生教学方面并根据背景科学文献，涵盖基础科学和临床应用。在课程结束时，学生自我报告说，他们对阅读和讨论科学论文以及评论文章的信心增强。该课程的关键影响不仅在于对再生医学普及领域的早期介绍，而且还鼓励年轻学生尽早参与研究并欣赏跨学科相互作用的价值。可以扩展教学模型，以便在机构中跨不同的本科专业方向实施学生自学入门课程。
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