MICB 401

MICB 401 (with Dr. Wade Bingle)

• Course Taken: Tuesday 12:30-2pm lecture, Wednesday 1-5pm lab
• Format: A typical lab course where you follow the directions in the lab manual. Make sure you have half an hour to go into the lab the day before and after your lab period to set up bacteria cultures/ wrap up an experiment (or have a really good friend). This course mainly puts what we learnt in MICB 201 into practice.
• Grading Scheme: 20% hand-in various projects in lab (ie. slants, plates), 30% written assignments/ calculations, 35-40% final exam (during exam period), 10-15% lab performance

• Textbook: MICB 401 Lab Manual (available in September, ~$20)
• Class Average: 81%
• Personal Experience: This is not a difficult course, but it does get confusing since you are juggling 4-5 different projects at the same time. The most difficult part is the final exam since you are expected to remember what you learnt in MICB 201 and apply it to the experiments we did. For example, for this type of media we used to grow bacteria, what could be the TEA/energy source/ C source etc. At the beginning of the course, you will also be asked to buy a lemon sole fish to cultivate luminous bacteria. The fish is relatively expensive ($15/fish), so it is advisable to buy the fish in groups 2-4. For the most part, the lab typically does not take 4 hours to finish. Most people tend to leave after 2 hours except for one lab day when you are extracting DNA via phenol chlorofoam. Compared to the other MICB labs, this is probably the easiest in terms of work load especially compared to MICB 447/421. 

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MICB 448/449

MICB 448/449 (Directed Studies/ Honours Thesis)

Course Taken: September 2015 - April 2016
Class Average for MICB 449: 95% (Note: there were only 5 students taking the course)
Format: Self-directed project (10 - 15 hours per week) that takes place in your supervisor's lab for one or two terms. At the end of the project, you are expected to write a 10-15 page thesis and present on your project. There is no difference between Directed Studies and Honours Thesis except perhaps the length of the "course". 

Requirements: 

• Contact eligible faculty members and discuss the possibilities of working in the lab of that faculty member. When there is a mutual agreement between the faculty member and the student then the student reports that agreement to the program coordinator and registers for the course

• Submit a written outline of the proposed research project to the supervisor and the course coordinator.

• Submit a written progress report to the supervisor and the course coordinator. 

• Finish lab work and submit a research article that analyses the project and the results to the supervisor and the course coordinator. 

• Defend the project and the report in a formal oral exam attended by the faculty supervisor and another faculty member.

Personal Experience/ Advice: If you want to work with a faculty member not in MICB, you will need to ask a MICB faculty member to be your co-supervisor. You may also need to justify how your project fits with microbiology & immunology. When choosing a project and a question, it is safer to choose an open-ended question rather than a "yes or no" question in case your project does not go as planned. A lot of students begin working in their prospective lab the summer before their official directed studies/ thesis starts to learn the techniques used in the lab, so that they can start their project right away in September. The biggest challenge with undertaking a self-directed project is staying motivated or at least motivated enough to optimize the assays required for your experiments. Remember to celebrate the small victories and ask other lab members for help!!

Grading Rubric: 

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MICB 406

MICB 406 (with Dr. Francois Jean, Dr. Marc Horwitz)

• Course Taken: T/Th 11-12:30pm (January 2016 - April 2016)
• Format: Dr. Jean lectures half the term, then Dr. Horwitz lectures the end. The goal of this course is to write a paper about viruses in the style of PLoS Pathogens PEARLS (http://collections.plos.org/s/pearls) for each professor. For Dr. Jean, the theme was "emerging and re-emerging viruses" while Dr. Horwitz did not have a theme. Dr. Jean's section asks students to present their proposed topic, but Dr. Horwtiz will lecture on a general topic (ie. vaccines) and ask students in groups to prepare short 10 minute presentations on a specific aspect of that topic (ie. subunit vaccines).
• Grading Scheme: Dr. Jean's section (5% abstract, 15% presentation, 5% participation, 25% paper), Dr. Horwitz's section (5% abstract, 5% outline, 25% paper, 15% participation)

• Textbook: none
• Class Average: 89%
• Personal Experience: This course may seem a lot of work at the beginning as you narrow down a topic, but it gets easier once you establish 4-5 questions you will address in your paper. The difficulty of the course depends on how hard you want to try and what topic you choose to write about (ie. papers about HIV will typically be easier given the amount of literature already published compared to Zika virus in 2016). Overall, if you do not mind writing two papers (1500 words and 3000 words) over the course of the entire term, this course is quite relaxed. MICB 406 is primarily a course that encourages self-learning. If you are not interested in learning about viruses by reading papers, you should probably consider MICB 407 (term 1) which has more lectures and focuses on clinical implications of virus infections. 

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MICB 306

MICB 306 (with Dr. Danielle Krebs, Dr. Francois Jean)

• Course Taken: MWF 12-1pm (September 2015 - December 2015)
• Format: Dr. Krebs lectures half the term, then Dr. Jean lectures the end. Dr. Krebs' section primarily focuses on general life cycles of viruses using certain viruses as case studies. Dr. Jean talks specifically about three viruses (Hep C virus, Dengue virus, Ebola virus) and goes into depth about how they hijack the host and what treatments are available.  
• Grading Scheme: 2 Midterms (20%, 25%), Final (45%), Online quizzes (10%)

• Textbook: Virology: Principles and Applications (J. Carter and V. Saunders), 2nd edition
• Class Average: 81% 
• Personal Experience: A very straight forward course with a decent amount of memorization, but nothing outrageous. The weekly online quizzes are easy, and mainly try to keep the students caught up with the material. It is essentially an extension of what was covered in MICB 202. The midterms and final are also extremely fair. Great course if you are interested in viruses. While Dr. Krebs is not as strong lecturer as Dr. Kion, she is able to still communicate the material effectively. Dr. Jean is much more knowledgable about viruses; however, his notes are very difficult to follow. Most likely, you will need to make your own notes. This is a required pre-req for MICB 406/407 (virology seminar courses). 

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MICB 430

MICB 430 (with Dr. Kronstad, Dr. Hallam, Dr. Jefferies)

• Course Taken: Thursday 1:30 - 5pm (rarely went to 5pm)
• Format: Each professor "taught" for 1/3 of the course. Students present every other week about an assigned primary literature article in partners. One student will present the paper while the second student will present the implications & critique the paper. Thus, each student will present twice for each professor--once as a reviewer, once as a critic.
• Grading Scheme: Unsure, but I assume each professor's section is worth 1/3 of the grade. 
• Textbook: none
• Class Average: 92%
• Personal Experience: This course may be a lot of work depending what papers you get assigned, and how comfortable you are at reading primary literature. Often the papers are out of your field, so you would need to read one review to understand the significance of the paper. If you want weekly journal club on various papers, and work on your presentation skills this course is for you. While it may be a bit of work every other week, the benefit is that there is no midterm or final and most students do extremely well in the course. The class size is about 10 students since typically only Honours students take the course. 

Answers to readers' questions: 

• Can non-honours people take it? Yes, non-honours people often take it. My year we had 12 people in the course, and only 5 people were honours. Talk to Dr. Kion to register.
• Do you recommend it for people not familiar with primary literature, can you become better at reading papers/ presentations? This is a great course to get better at reading papers since it just forces you to read way more than you would otherwise read. When I did the course, we had to present fortnightly; however, this may have changed since then. This course does not “teach” you how to read papers, but it does make you improve. You tend to present the papers with a partner, so you and your partner can bounce ideas/ struggle through the paper together. If you get really stuck, you can always go to the prof. They tend to be super helpful, and easily approachable. One thing to remember is when you present, only present the figures which depict the main point(s) of the paper and not every single figure.

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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 Experience: This 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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MICB 447

MICB 447 (with Dr. Dave Oliver)

• Course Taken: Tuesday 8am, Tuesday Lab (September 2015 - December 2015) You end up going into the lab regardless of lab day though.
• Format: Working in groups of 3/4 for the entire term where you design and carry out an original research project. There are weekly lecture and team meeting. At the end of the course, you will publish a primarily research article in JEMI or if your paper is really good, JEMI+. 
• Grading Scheme: Multiple schemes depending which gives you higher grade (depends on primarily lab notebook, midterm, project proposal, lab report)

• Textbook: Optional Lab Book $10 (also posted online for free)
• Class Average: 86%
• Personal Experience: You learn a lot from this course from experimental design, lab techniques, to working in a team. Pick a group you work well with not necessarily your friends. Even the simplest project will often take triple the amount of time expected, so perhaps consider a less ambitious project. Do not trust any reagent you did not personally make yourself! Remember that this is a course, and mistakes will happen but that is how everyone learns. If possible, do not take directed studies with this lab course since this course will take A LOT of outside time. A rough estimate will be 16 hours per week for each team, and possibly more at the end of term. When deciding a project, it might be easier if your project did not ask a question where the experiment either worked or did not. 

Answers from readers' questions: 

• Choose a good group to work with. I think groups work best if people have different lab experiences and strengths (ie. organization skills, writing, experimental techniques, troubleshooting). Also, ensure that everyone has time to come into the lab outside of the course time.
• When you choose/ design a project, choose a project where at no point it hinges on a “yes/ no” answer. For example, what are the effects of caffeine vs does caffeine do this? Cause when it comes to writing up, it is easier to talk about the broader question than a yes/no question. If you can work on multiple parts of the project at the same time, it will save you time. For example, optimizing both protocol A and B at the same time before combining the two for your proper experiment. You can see the projects people did in previous years here: https://www.microbiology.ubc.ca/undergraduate/jemi
• Read as much as possible before you dive into your project. The more pre-planning you do, the less troubleshooting you’ll probably run into.  

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