Teach a Microbiology seminar course at UMass Boston in Spring 2022

Opportunity to serve as the instructor for an Honors Microbiology seminar course this Spring 2022 at the Honors College at University of Massachusetts Boston

For postdocs and senior graduate students, this is a remarkable chance to get mentored teaching experience along with a small stipend, and for faculty, it is an opportunity to teach a type of course that you may have always dreamed about.

This course (composed of 15 juniors, mainly but not exclusively biology majors) will run from 1/24 through 5/11 Mondays & Wednesdays from 4:00 pm – 5:15 pm  (see below for the full course description). 

The course is predominantly focused on teaching research skills and mentoring each student in their development of the skills they will need during their next year (when the students are doing their Senior Honors Thesis research projects). Note that this is not a lab course, because the students will all be doing different kinds of research for their thesis (e.g. some might do wet-lab work, but some might do field research, computational research, public health research, human subjects research, science policy research, etc). The research skills being built during this course are skills that any students might use for their thesis, reading scientific literature, doing statistical analysis, making data figures, writing literature reviews, peer reviewing, giving oral presentations, etc.

A preliminary syllabus exists for the course, with plenty of room to modify and build it, if you are interested in helping to design the course from first principles. Mentorship in both syllabus design and teaching will be readily available both before and during the Spring 2022 term from the Associate Dean of the Honors College, Megan Rokop.

If you are potentially interested in this opportunity, please contact Megan at Megan.Rokop@umb.edu

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Honors 380: The Wonderful World of Microbes 

Mondays & Wednesdays from 4:00pm – 5:15pm 

Honors College, University of Massachusetts Boston

What is a microbe? Are they good or bad? What role do they play in the environment and in human health? How do we know and how can we study organisms that we cannot see? Microbiology is a fascinating field that is shaping society, health, and technology, and we will examine how novel scientific discoveries, public perception, and bioethics have all played a role. In this discussion-based, scientific skill-building class, we will learn about beneficial and harmful microbes and discuss the critical role that the scientific method plays in microbial research. We will cover topics ranging from the history of microbiology to the pioneering discoveries driving future technologies and their potential ramifications. Embracing complexity, our discussions will likely generate more questions than answers. This class will have no exams and requires class participation. Just as 21st-century scientists do, students will consume information from a variety of sources (primary literature, news articles and stories, book passages), engage with contrasting opinions, and formulate their own ideas, hypotheses, and theories about the topics covered. Students will hone critical thinking, communication, and research skills through readings, class discussions, and multiple writing assignments and presentations. We will learn how to create and present an engaging scientific poster and seminar talk and will interact with scientists who study microbes to hear about their research and careers. Regardless of major, students taking this class can expect to gain an appreciation for how microbes are shaping the world around us and for using scientific thinking as a valuable tool.