Wake Forest Chemistry students are gaining more opportunities to experience the uncertainty, problem-solving, and discovery of authentic scientific research through a redesigned laboratory course developed by John Lukesh, associate professor and director of Graduate Studies, and graduate assistant Devin Weaver (PhD ’27). The six-week course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE), part of the Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Discovery concentration, moves beyond traditional “cookbook” laboratory exercises. Students tackle a multistep research project incorporating organic synthesis, analytical chemistry, data analysis, and biological applications, ultimately communicating their results in an American Chemical Society-style manuscript.
The approach makes meaningful research experience available to every student in the course, rather than limiting participation to the relatively small number of positions available in individual faculty research groups. After several semesters of refinement, every student group was successfully generating meaningful results by the third iteration of the course. Lukesh and Weaver, along with recent graduate Danielle Simon (’26), have now published their work on the laboratory model in the Journal of Chemical Education. Lukesh hopes the approach can serve as a model for bringing authentic research experiences into lower-level chemistry courses and giving students the opportunity to begin thinking and working like scientists earlier in their undergraduate education.