The First-Year Research Experience (FYRE) program promotes STEM undergraduate research at the University of Oklahoma (OU) through allowing first-year students to conduct semester-long, mentored primary research internships. The design of the FYRE program gives talented STEM-oriented students an immersive and perspective-building experience in research at the beginning of their college career. The FYRE students are expected to perform 10-12 hours of research per week in a laboratory matched to their scientific interests and to attend the bi-weekly FYRE Colloquia meetings. The FYRE Colloquia sessions allow the student to bond as a STEM learning community and to interact with STEM-research professionals, in order to gain perspective of research-oriented career paths. The 2015 FYRE semester will include 70 FYRE students performing research with 28 different OU research groups, spread over several academic departments. The evolution of FYRE to a campus-wide STEM research vehicle now allows first-year students from many different majors, including non-science majors, to gain valuable experience in laboratory research. A general-interest FYRE project designed as a gateway to laboratory research for non-science majors is the “Molecular Gastronomy of Coffee” project. This project emphasizes the application of molecular techniques to elucidate the chemical composition of flavor and is ideal in introducing freshmen students to bench-centered research. This project allows students as a group to investigate flavor aspects of coffee as a function of the storage time of roasted coffee beans, the degree of roast and brewing conditions. Technically, students learn extraction techniques and chemical identification using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Last year, the 6 students participating in this project were able to identify and quantitate variations in around forty diverse flavor components in coffee from different kinds of coffee beans. The students also designed and conducted research to test individual hypotheses related to the study of coffee. The retention of these students in STEM related studies will be followed. This project demonstrates a scalable program to engage students in meaningful research that can readily incorporate independent inquiry.

First-Year Research Experience (FYRE) program: A gateway to undergraduate research and enhanced STEM development at the University of Oklahoma

249th National Meeting (2015)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.