Leadership Skill Development in an Undergraduate Biochemistry Lab
Authors: Rhoads Dennis E. 
Published: June 2021

In recognition of the value associated with project management experience, a step was taken to incorporate a formal leadership exercise into a junior‐level undergraduate biochemistry lab. This effort was combined with a reorientation of the lab toward research‐like exercises. The research‐like exercises took advantage of tissue by‐products from faculty research, namely, tissues from rats that had been fed liquid diets containing alcohol and other drugs. As alcohol creates oxidative stress, the focus of the biochemistry exercises was the response of various tissues through an enzyme like catalase which eliminates a reactive oxygen species. Students select a tissue and then move through subcellular fractionation, protein determination, and characterization of the enzyme activity, along with characterization of the fraction by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Different teams have different treatment groups. The outcomes are largely unknown, testing of each procedure is required and the plan for each step requires some level of fine‐tuning and optimization. This is where the leadership exercise developed. Students work in groups of 3 with the team leader rotated with each change in technique. Each actual lab session encompasses a minimum of two lab periods. In the first lab period, only the team leaders attend. They work through the plan for the exercise individually under the supervision of the instructor and yet they work together toward the common goal of developing the procedure that their team will then use. In the second lab period, each leader directs their team, with the instructor largely observing the performance of the team leaders.

The semester begins with an overview of leadership objectives. These objectives are then carried through peer (team) evaluations of the leader and self‐evaluations by each leader. Student reactions to the more exploratory research‐like exercises were assessed as were aspects of the leadership portion of the exercise. The most common item in self‐evaluations as needing improvement was “delegate specific responsibilities”. The most common items needing improvement from team perspectives were “make sure everyone understands their responsibilities” and “review the results with the team”. Student reactions to exploratory exercises were mixed with 44% of the students viewing them in a completely positive light. A much higher (75%) of the students indicated their confidence increased a great deal as a result of serving as a team leader. In response to what was the most valuable part of the leadership exercise, 45% indicated it was the opportunity to do the exercise by themselves in the first of the two lab periods. This was somewhat unexpected as the “most valuable” part of the experience but perhaps related to another outcome that 50% of the students indicated that the exercise increased their interest in research to the point that they intended to seek additional research opportunities. As major conclusions, the addition of a leadership component to an exploratory biochemistry exercise showed positive results in elevating confidence and increasing interest in further research opportunities.

This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.