Incorporating Endophyte Research into Instrumental Analysis and Disseminating Results without Traditional Publication

For the past decade, research on the medicinal properties of fungal endophytes found in the local salt marsh have been part of the instrumental analysis course at Salem State University. From a practical perspective, this has been more cost effective than having each student working on a different project. From an academic perspective it has helped improve the depth of the project in this limited time. Incorporating research into a course, especially one that is taken at the end of a student's time in a University, is uniquely difficult to make overall progress. Since almost all projects have to begin and reach some kind of conclusion in just a semester there is a severe time limitation. While research is done throughout the whole semester, some unrelated experiments need to be added to hit on the required content. At the end of the semester the research results need to be analyzed and presented. Presenting the research at the Salem State Research Symposium only posed one further problem - dissemination of the information beyond the university. Some of the lessons learned and workarounds utilized to address these issues will be presented.