MIMG 109AL
Research Immersion Laboratory in Microbiology
Description: Lecture, three hours; laboratory, eight hours. Requisites: course 101, Life Sciences 3, 4, and 23L, or 7A, 7B, and 23L. Course 109AL is enforced requisite to 109BL. Limited to Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics premajors and majors and Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology majors. Research-oriented laboratory experience designed to promote discovery of novel microorganisms. Working in teams, students conduct research projects that incorporate techniques in microbiology and molecular biology and involve use of bioinformatics tools and phylogenetics software for data analysis. Emphasis on reading and understanding scientific literature as well as improving critical thinking skills such as ability to create and evaluate hypotheses or experimentally address scientific questions. Critical aspects of research process, including record keeping, ethics, laboratory safety and citizenry, mechanics of scientific writing, and project responsibilities and ownership. Letter grading.
Units: 5.0
Units: 5.0
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2024 - This class has kind of an insane workload. On top of 2.5 hours of lecture and 6 hours of lab each week, time spent outside of class working with your group on the writing portions of your project, coming into lab to make up work, and doing pre-labs/post-labs, you will also be responsible for a bunch of frustrating, time-consuming reading and busywork to prepare for lecture. Dr. Bouklas is genuinely kind and concerned with her students, but her lectures can be kind of frustrating when they're about things like how to work in a team and make a slideshow. Lab sections often felt busy and disorganized, though you do a lot of cool stuff, and I learned a lot. Plan to dedicate a lot of time and energy to this class.
Winter 2024 - This class has kind of an insane workload. On top of 2.5 hours of lecture and 6 hours of lab each week, time spent outside of class working with your group on the writing portions of your project, coming into lab to make up work, and doing pre-labs/post-labs, you will also be responsible for a bunch of frustrating, time-consuming reading and busywork to prepare for lecture. Dr. Bouklas is genuinely kind and concerned with her students, but her lectures can be kind of frustrating when they're about things like how to work in a team and make a slideshow. Lab sections often felt busy and disorganized, though you do a lot of cool stuff, and I learned a lot. Plan to dedicate a lot of time and energy to this class.
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2019 - Just do the work and you're guaranteed an A. Dr. Freise is literally the best professor I've ever had. Another review said something like "She's the best professor and your best friend", and I don't think I could have said it better. She was basically my therapist when I was taking her classes.
Fall 2019 - Just do the work and you're guaranteed an A. Dr. Freise is literally the best professor I've ever had. Another review said something like "She's the best professor and your best friend", and I don't think I could have said it better. She was basically my therapist when I was taking her classes.
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2016 - This class isn't hard but workload is huge. This is probably the most work-intensive lab I have ever had at UCLA. In a sense it's easy to get an A, if you just do all the work - which is a lot. This class will easily take up 90% of your time. There's weekly homework, presentations, papers, keeping the lab notebook up to date, etc. so there are no breaks whatsoever. Dr. Parker might seem strict on the outside but she can be lenient where it counts. I would suggest talking to her, asking her questions, and getting to know her so that you stand out as a student. She might be snippy with some of her answers but don't take it personally. She doesn't have answers to everything though so you should just ask your TA. Your TA is key, they do most of the grading and are the ones overlooking your project. Talk to them, be friendly, be casual. My tips for this class are : 1) keep on top of your lab notebook. Everyday after lab update it with pictures and results. DO NOT fall behind on the notebook. This is rule número uno. 2) communicate with your group. Always. Start strengthening the group dynamics early so that everyone is comfortable talking to each other. It makes coordinating the project a lot easier. Also make sure all group members have lab results. Once you start splitting up duties for the project you will need to keep everyone up to speed on procedure, results, pictures, etc. 3) DO NOT procrastinate your midterm and final papers. Start that at least a week in advance. They will be at least 10 pages long. I stayed up over 24 hours because I only started two days before the due date. Just do a little each day. Trust me. 4) take advantage of her extra credit opportunities. If you do all her extra credit, you can get 50 points max. That's a lot. 5) participate in lecture. It might look like no one is keeping track of participation, but they are. Your TA is writing down who is asking questions and answering them. I got an A in this course even though my notebook and final paper were terrible, but I did all the extra credit. I admit I did have fun in this class and it has prepared me for any future experiments because of all the lab work. There will be moments of panic where your results will be contradictory or something won't work and you think that your experiment is a failure, just remember everything will work out in the end. That I can promise.
Winter 2016 - This class isn't hard but workload is huge. This is probably the most work-intensive lab I have ever had at UCLA. In a sense it's easy to get an A, if you just do all the work - which is a lot. This class will easily take up 90% of your time. There's weekly homework, presentations, papers, keeping the lab notebook up to date, etc. so there are no breaks whatsoever. Dr. Parker might seem strict on the outside but she can be lenient where it counts. I would suggest talking to her, asking her questions, and getting to know her so that you stand out as a student. She might be snippy with some of her answers but don't take it personally. She doesn't have answers to everything though so you should just ask your TA. Your TA is key, they do most of the grading and are the ones overlooking your project. Talk to them, be friendly, be casual. My tips for this class are : 1) keep on top of your lab notebook. Everyday after lab update it with pictures and results. DO NOT fall behind on the notebook. This is rule número uno. 2) communicate with your group. Always. Start strengthening the group dynamics early so that everyone is comfortable talking to each other. It makes coordinating the project a lot easier. Also make sure all group members have lab results. Once you start splitting up duties for the project you will need to keep everyone up to speed on procedure, results, pictures, etc. 3) DO NOT procrastinate your midterm and final papers. Start that at least a week in advance. They will be at least 10 pages long. I stayed up over 24 hours because I only started two days before the due date. Just do a little each day. Trust me. 4) take advantage of her extra credit opportunities. If you do all her extra credit, you can get 50 points max. That's a lot. 5) participate in lecture. It might look like no one is keeping track of participation, but they are. Your TA is writing down who is asking questions and answering them. I got an A in this course even though my notebook and final paper were terrible, but I did all the extra credit. I admit I did have fun in this class and it has prepared me for any future experiments because of all the lab work. There will be moments of panic where your results will be contradictory or something won't work and you think that your experiment is a failure, just remember everything will work out in the end. That I can promise.
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