Spotlight on the Microbiology Teaching Team

Written by Peggy Ni - YSP Volunteer

YSP's Microbiology Teaching Team, led by Brian Malpede who is a Ph.D. student in the Molecular Microbiology and Microbial Pathogenesis Program, has been very busy these days, with an increase in outings to one or two a month now.  Brian recently took some time to share with us the interesting work that the Micro Team has been doing.  Having started volunteering for different YSP events because he enjoys teaching students, Brian had taken on the additional responsibilities of being the Teaching Team Head because he believes it is worthwhile to help supplement the microbiology knowledge of the students and then see them get excited about learning it.  Other volunteers with the Micro Team probably share his feelings, in addition to just wanting to escape lab for a bit, taking advantage of the chance to talk about science in the broader context instead of the narrow scope one must focus on in lab, and getting others excited about what they do in the lab.  Currently, one or two volunteers participate in each teaching team event. 

The Micro Team has faced a few challenges, which have all contributed to valuable learning experiences and allowed the team to be as successful as it is today.  Brian admits that now, meaning later in the semester, one challenge is for volunteers to commit their time to teaching since they understandably have finals to stress out about.  Nevertheless, the volunteers of the Micro Team have been incredibly dedicated, with great turnout earlier in the semesters.  Additionally, the volunteers must be able to adapt to different class sizes, as each teaching outing can have as little as 7 students to as many as 25.  Most importantly, it can be hard to come up with microbiology demos because a lot of things the volunteers want to do involve growing organisms, which a one-day teaching event obviously does not allow for.  And even if limitations on growing organisms could be overcome, it would still be difficult to make this type of demo interesting.  For instance, E. coli is commonly grown in the lab to make protein, and although this is an integral step in an experiment, it could be difficult to translate this microbe's significance in a short teaching demo.  Finally, volunteers sometimes encounter difficulties when they go to schools where the students are not enthused to learn about microbiology.  Brian recounts one time that stood out – half the students didn't show up, the other half didn't want to be there.  Plus, they were doing a gram staining exercise, which goes by slowly, making it even harder to engage the students.  Brian emphasizes that this is not the usual case.  Most of the time, it's easy to get the students excited about the demos; but, it is with challenges such as these that allow the volunteers to gain experience in coming up with engaging demos and thinking on the spot when teaching.

There are two main demos that the Micro Team usually includes in its outings.  A hand-washing exercise is particularly popular – students put a lotion that responds to UV (the lotion in this case is used to represent bacteria) on their hands, wash with hand sanitizer or soap, and shine UV light over their hands.  They should observe that with sanitizer, they keep seeing the UV because it doesn't get rid of the lotion ("bacteria"), but washing with soap should eliminate that.  "During the demo, we try to ask the students questions about why they wash their hands, how to prevent disease, how is disease transmitted," Brian adds.  Simple, creative, and amenable to discussion, it is no wonder this demo is used so often.  Another demo is an epidemiology one about disease transmission in a population.  Cups are filled with fluid, one cup with either a basic or acidic solution while the rest contain water.  The students take the cups, "swap fluids" (exchange in their cups), and use a pH meter to measure pH change – which is symbolic of getting the disease – to see who is infected or not.  Brian also notes that many of the teachers like to get involved, so volunteers often communicate with them to expand on the curriculum that the students have already been learning in the classroom rather than bring up completely unfamiliar topics.  Through tackling and overcoming the many challenges faced while volunteering – from trying to come up with relevant and meaningful demos to facing less than interested students – the Micro Team has undoubtedly enhanced the graduate or medical school experiences of its volunteers and enriched the lives of the students it teaches, making the difficulties all worth it.