Thursday 28 January 2016

MICB 402 and MICB 412

MICB 402 (with Dr. Kenneth Harder, Dr. Georgia Perona-Wright)

  • Course Taken: T/Th 9:30am (September 2015 - December 2015)
  • Format: Dr. Harder teaches the first half, Dr. PW teaches the second half. Dr. Harder will mainly focus on innate immunity and ask you to read 6 primary literature papers on the topic (except for one cancer immunology paper)
  • Grading Scheme: Dr. Harder's Section (25% in-class midterm, 25% take home), Dr. PW's Section (35% take home, 25% final)
  • Textbook: none
  • Class Average: 76% 
  • Personal Experience: Given the class size is quite large, MICB 402 tries to disguise itself like a seminar course; however, at the end of the day, it remains a traditional lecturing course. Dr. Harder's section primarily focuses on experimental design & techniques. Although he suggests to pre-read the papers prior to class, he ends up going over each paper pretty slowly each class. Depending on how many questions people ask in class, he might run out of time before the midterm and you will be expected to read & understand the remaining papers. If you are comfortable reading primary literature, this course is not overly difficult. For Dr. Harder's midterm + take home, write FAST! Both tests are very long (not overly difficult but tedious), so plan accordingly. This year is Dr. PW's first & last year teaching MICB 402 (she accepted a position in Scotland), and previously it was Dr. Jefferies teaching the latter portion of the course. For Dr. PW, she typically used Tuesday to go over the background/ significance of the paper and Thursday to go over the experiments. Rather than focusing on experimental design, she emphasized immunological concepts & details. The papers she chose were focused primarily on the adaptive immune system especially Th2 response to helminth infections/ co-infections. Again, majority of her papers were not overly difficult but demonstrated key themes in advanced immunology. Her exam + take home was much more reasonable in terms of length and difficulty.
  • Note: Dr. Perona-Wright has accepted a faculty position back in Scotland and will not be teaching at UBC next year. :( 
Answers from readers' questions:

  • Was tutorial mandatory? What is tutorial like? Tutorial was not mandatory for us in the sense that attendance was not taken. I think we were highly encouraged to go, but most of us did not. Tutorial was going over methodology used in the papers we talked about in the course, and how to interpret data. However, I think the course may have changed since I took it with Dr. Harder & Dr. Perona-Wright in 2015/2016.


MICB 412 (with Dr. Pauline Johnson, Dr. Kenneth Harder)


  • Course Taken: T/Th 9:30am (January 2016 - April 2016)
  • Format: Dr. Johnson teaches the first half, Dr. Harder teaches the second half. Dr. Johnson focuses on the balance between our microbiota and maintaining homeostasis. Dr. Harder will mainly focus on cancer immunology. This course is a seminar-based course which means students are assigned a topic and are required to present ~15 minutes, 10 minutes questions on that topic. 
  • Grading Scheme: Dr. Johnson's Section (35% class presentation, 10% participation, 5% written report), Dr. Harder's Section (35% presentation, 10% participation, 5% written report)

  • Textbook: none
  • Class Average: 88%
  • Personal ExperienceThis course used to be 18 - 20 students; however, this year the course had around 25 students. Given the time constraints, students will present one 15 - 20 minutes presentation for each professor + 10 minutes of questions. Dr. Johnson prefers presentations that focus on content (based on reviews) while Dr. Harder prefers presentations that thoroughly explain one or two primary papers' methods + results. Besides presenting, you are expected to participate during the rest of the classes by asking questions. Finally, near the end of each half, you are expected to write a ~3 page summary of the topic, synthesizing all the talks. 
  • Advice: If you are uncomfortable with presenting, I highly suggest practicing beforehand to ensure your presentation falls within the time limit. In addition, if you are unsure what areas to focus on, you can ask the professor. 

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