From the beginning, Viel intended for LS100r to be as widely accessible to the Harvard student body as possible.

LS100r alone among research-based classes does not demand any prerequisite courses or research experience. Even non-science concentrators can enroll for a semester.

“It is important to give some students that will ultimately not be scientists the opportunity to experience research,” Viel says. “We’re open to every student regardless of field of concentration or year.”

In the past, the class has had social sciences concentrators as well as a law student who wanted to better understand the experience of lab work before going into the field of patent law. Even within the life sciences, however, many students have never worked in a lab or been exposed to research, so LS100r provides an avenue to explore research without joining a lab officially.

“It’s a great way for students to decide whether or not research is for them,” Viel says.

Buschbach had never done research before coming to Harvard this fall, so he jumped at the opportunity “to know what it was like to do research here,” he says.

And while students in most introductory classes will be exposed to lab reports and learn scientific principles through textbooks and basic lab work, Lue says that any sort of science education is incomplete without a research component.

“No matter what you end up doing, research is what science is all about,” Lue says.

—Staff writer Jessica A. Barzilay can be reached at jessicabarzilay@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @jessicabarzilay.