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In the early 2000s, our primarily undergraduate, white institution (PUI/PWI), began recruiting and enrolling higher numbers of students of color and first-generation college students. However, like many of our peer institutions, our established pedagogies and mindsets did not provide these students an educational experience to enable them to persist and thrive in STEM. Realizing the need to systematically address our lack of inclusivity in science majors, in 2012 faculty from multiple disciplines developed the Science, Math, and Research Training (SMART) program. Here, we describe an educational innovation, originally funded by a grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, designed to support and retain students of color, first generation college students, and other students with marginalized identities in the sciences through a cohort-based, integrated, and inclusive first-year experience focused on community and sense of belonging. The SMART program engages first-year students with semester-long themed courses around “real world” problems of antibiotic resistance and viral infections while integrating the fields of Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, and an optional Computer Science component. In the decade since its inception, 97% of SMART students have graduated or are on track to graduate, with 80.9% of these students earning a major in a STEM discipline. Here, we present additional student outcomes since the initiation of this program, results of the student self-evaluative surveys SALG and CURE, and lessons we have learned from a decade of this educational experience.

In many freshwater habitats, green algae form intracellular symbioses with a variety of heterotrophic host taxa including several species of freshwater sponge. These sponges perform important ecological roles in their habitats, and the poriferan:green algae partnerships offers unique opportunities to study the evolutionary origins and ecological persistence of endosymbioses. We examined the association between Ephydatia muelleri and its chlorophyte partner to identify features of host cellular and genetic responses to the presence of intracellular algal partners. Chlorella-like green algal symbionts were isolated from field-collected adult E. muelleri tissue harboring algae. The sponge-derived algae were successfully cultured and subsequently used to reinfect aposymbiotic E. muelleri tissue. We used confocal microscopy to follow the fate of the sponge-derived algae after inoculating algae-free E. muelleri grown from gemmules to show temporal patterns of symbiont location within host tissue. We also infected aposymbiotic E. muelleri with sponge-derived algae, and performed RNASeq to study differential expression patterns in the host relative to symbiotic states. We compare and contrast our findings with work in other systems (e.g., endosymbiotic Hydra) to explore possible conserved evolutionary pathways that may lead to stable mutualistic endosymbioses. Our work demonstrates that freshwater sponges offer many tractable qualities to study features of intracellular occupancy and thus meet criteria desired for a model system.