Fundamentals of Microbiology

Course Description

Fundamentals of Microbiology is an introductory microbiology course for non-science majors specifically designed to meet the microbiology pre-requisite requirement for the 4 year BSN degree. It covers the principles of microbiology, including cellular organization, growth, and metabolism of major microbial groups (bacteria, fungi, viruses and protozoa); cultivation and control of microbes; and the interaction between microorganisms and humans as it relates to disease transmission, pathogenesis, control measures, and treatment. UWF states it meets the General Education requirement in Natural Sciences.

Within the SCNS taxonomy, MCB is the Microbiology prefix. The University of West Florida publishes this at 3 semester hours through the Department of Medical Laboratory Sciences, College of Health. It is offered at approximately 4 Florida institutions.

⚠ The statewide inventory carries this number as "The Invisible World" in its integrated MCB1000C form; UWF publishes it as "Fundamentals of Microbiology" and splits it into a lecture and a separate laboratory. This guide documents the UWF lecture.

This is the most consequential course in the prefix for the largest number of students, because for most of them it is not really a microbiology course — it is the gate to a nursing programme. UWF says so in the description.

⚠ "For non-science majors" does not mean easy. It means the course does not assume chemistry or a year of biology, and builds what it needs. The volume of unfamiliar vocabulary is the real difficulty — genus and species names, metabolic pathways, drug classes and disease names arrive faster than in almost any other introductory science course.

The material is also unusually applicable to ordinary life. Why an antibiotic does nothing for a cold, why finishing a course of one matters, what hand hygiene actually accomplishes, and how a vaccine works are all answered here — and answered wrongly by a great deal of what circulates publicly.

⚠ Why this guide exists under this number

Many Florida institutions carry this material as a single integrated C course. UWF runs a separate lecture and laboratory, each with its own SCNS number, and this guide documents the UWF lecture. Its laboratory partner, where UWF publishes one, is documented separately in this repository. ⚠ SCNS equivalency does not cross numbers, so transfer between the integrated and split forms is evaluated by hand — carry a syllabus in either direction.

⚠ The contact-hour figure is derived — the University of West Florida publishes none

UWF's catalog publishes a credit value in semester hours, the college and department, prerequisites and co-requisites, and fee notices. It does not publish contact hours, a lecture and laboratory split, or terms of offering for any course. Every contact-hour value in a UWF guide in this repository is derived. The figure applies the standard lecture convention of 15 contact hours per credit, giving 45 hours for 3 semester hours. Confirm the meeting schedule with the department.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Describe the scope of microbiology and its historical development.
• Describe the structure and organisation of prokaryotic cells.
• Compare prokaryotic and eukaryotic cellular organisation.
• Describe the major microbial groups: bacteria, fungi, viruses, and protozoa.
• Describe microbial growth and the conditions affecting it.
• Describe microbial metabolism in general terms.
• Describe microbial genetics and how genes transfer between microbes.
• Describe methods of cultivating microorganisms.
• Describe physical and chemical methods of controlling microbes.
• Distinguish sterilisation, disinfection, antisepsis, and sanitisation.
• Describe antimicrobial drugs and their modes of action.
• Explain antimicrobial resistance, how it arises, and why it matters.
• Describe the normal human microbiota and its roles.
• Describe host-microbe interactions and the disease process.
• Describe pathogenesis and virulence factors.
• Describe modes of disease transmission.
• Describe innate and adaptive host defences in outline.
• Describe immunisation and how vaccines confer protection.
• Describe epidemiology in outline including outbreak terminology.
• Describe major infectious diseases by body system.
• Apply infection control reasoning to health care settings.

Optional Outcomes

• Relate course content to a current Florida public health problem.
• Describe antimicrobial resistance as a clinical and public health problem.
• Read and interpret a primary research paper or outbreak report.
• Describe how the material supports graduate or professional study.
• Seek undergraduate research or laboratory experience in the field.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Scope and history of microbiology
• Prokaryotic cell structure
• Prokaryotic versus eukaryotic organisation
• Bacteria, fungi, viruses, protozoa
• Microbial growth and its requirements
• Microbial metabolism
• Microbial genetics and gene transfer
• Cultivation of microorganisms
• Physical and chemical control of microbes
• Sterilisation, disinfection, antisepsis
• Antimicrobial drugs and modes of action
• Antimicrobial resistance
• Normal human microbiota
• Host-microbe interaction and disease
• Pathogenesis and virulence factors
• Disease transmission
• Host defences
• Immunisation and vaccines
• Epidemiology in outline
• Infectious disease by body system
• Infection control in health care

Optional Topics

• Florida public health applications
• Antimicrobial resistance
• Primary literature and outbreak reports
• Graduate and professional preparation
• Undergraduate research and laboratory experience

Resources & Tools

• The microbiology text the instructor assigns — Tortora's Microbiology: An Introduction and Bauman's Microbiology with Diseases are the two most widely used for this audience, and both are written for students without a chemistry background.
• OpenStax Microbiology (openstax.org) — free and genuinely good; peer-reviewed, complete, and a legitimate substitute if the assigned text is out of budget. Check with the instructor about matching chapters.
• Flashcards, digital or paper — free options exist (Anki); the vocabulary load is the main obstacle in this course and spaced repetition is the tool built for it.
• CDC vaccine and antibiotic-resistance pages — free; written for the public and a good check on whether you can explain a mechanism plainly, which is what a nurse actually has to do.
• WHO fact sheets on antimicrobial resistance — free; the global picture, and a useful corrective to treating resistance as a distant problem.
• CDC (cdc.gov) — free; disease pages, treatment guidance, and the MMWR, which is where outbreak investigations are actually published.
• Florida Department of Health (floridahealth.gov) — free; state and county reportable disease data, and the surveillance reports that make this material local.
• A UWF librarian — included in enrolment; an hour on database searching pays for itself across a whole degree.

Career Pathways

• Medical and clinical laboratory technologist (SOC 29-2011) and technician (SOC 29-2012) — ⚠ Florida licenses clinical laboratory personnel through the Department of Health, and licensure requires an approved programme, not merely coursework. Microbiology is one of the core disciplines of the field.
• Microbiologist (SOC 19-1022) — public health laboratories, environmental laboratories, water utilities, food safety, and pharmaceutical and biotechnology quality control.
• Epidemiologist (SOC 19-1041) — generally requires a graduate degree; the Florida Department of Health and county health departments are the principal state employers.
• Infection preventionist — hospital-based, commonly entered from nursing or medical laboratory science, with CBIC certification. Florida's large hospital systems — AdventHealth, Orlando Health, BayCare, Baptist, Ascension Sacred Heart in Pensacola — all employ them.
• Registered nurse (SOC 29-1141) — microbiology is a prerequisite for essentially every Florida nursing programme, which is why this prefix carries so much enrolment.
• Public health analyst and disease intervention specialist — county health departments across Florida; the state's climate, density, travel volume and mosquito burden make it a genuinely active infectious disease environment.
• Food safety and environmental health inspector — Florida's hospitality and agriculture sectors are large, and both are regulated on microbiological grounds.
• Water quality and environmental microbiology — utilities, springs and estuarine monitoring, and harmful algal bloom response, all substantial in this state.
• Preparation for medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine, physician assistant and pharmacy — microbiology is prerequisite or strongly expected for all of them.

Special Information

⚠⚠⚠ UWF runs THREE separate microbiology routes — make sure you are in the right one

This is the single most important thing to understand about the MCB prefix, and no course title says it. UWF publishes three parallel microbiology sequences, in two different colleges and three different departments, aimed at three different audiences. They are not interchangeable, and enrolling in the wrong one wastes a term.

• ⚠⚠ Only the 3020 route is upper-division and only it opens the rest of the prefix. MCB4203 Microbes & Disease requires MCB3020 and accepts neither of the others. A biology major who takes the health sciences course has not met the requirement.
• ⚠ The prerequisites tell you the level far better than the titles do. MCB3020 requires general chemistry with its laboratory plus a full year of biology or anatomy and physiology; MCB2010 and MCB2010L publish no prerequisites at all. That gap is the real difference between the routes.
• If you are pre-nursing, check which one your programme names. UWF built MCB1000 for the BSN prerequisite explicitly, but nursing programmes at other Florida institutions frequently name MCB2010C instead, and requirements change between catalog years. Ask your advisor and get the answer against your own catalog year.
• ⚠⚠ Transferring in or out, this is where credit goes wrong. All three carry the word "Microbiology," and a transfer evaluator reading titles rather than descriptions can accept a course that does not satisfy the requirement. Carry a syllabus.
• Most Florida institutions run only one or two of these routes, commonly the integrated MCB2010C. UWF running all three is unusual and is what makes the choice a real one here.

⚠⚠⚠ UWF built this course for the BSN prerequisite — and that is exactly why you must check your own programme

• UWF states the course is "specifically designed to meet the microbiology pre-requisite requirement for the 4 year BSN degree." That is an unusually direct statement of purpose for a catalog entry, and it should be taken at face value for UWF's own nursing programme.
• ⚠⚠ It is not a guarantee for anyone else's. Nursing programmes across Florida name their microbiology prerequisite differently — many name the integrated MCB2010C, some name MCB2010 plus MCB2010L, and some accept several. The number your programme names is the one that counts.
• ⚠ Catalog-year matters as much as institution. Prerequisite lists are revised, and you are generally held to the catalog year you entered under. Get the answer in writing against your own catalog year, not from a current web page or from another student.
• Most nursing programmes require the laboratory as well as the lecture, and many require a minimum grade — commonly a C or better — and a recency limit, frequently five to seven years. A passing grade is not automatically a qualifying grade, and an old one may not count at all.
• Nursing admission in Florida is competitive and prerequisite grades are the ranking mechanism. Treat this course as part of your application, not as a box to clear.
• ⚠ If you may transfer, decide early. Taking the course that your destination programme names is far easier than arguing equivalency afterwards.

⚠ This course meets a General Education requirement in Natural Sciences

• UWF publishes this explicitly, which makes it one of the few courses in this prefix that carries general education credit in its own right.
• ⚠ That is useful and it has a limit. A course can satisfy general education and a programme prerequisite at the same time, but whether your programme allows one course to do both jobs is a programme rule, not a catalog rule. Ask your advisor.
• Florida general education blocks transfer well between public institutions under the statewide articulation agreement — a completed A.A. carries the general education block intact. Individual courses moving without the completed block are evaluated one at a time.
• ⚠ Note that the laboratory is a separate course and a separate registration. Some general education science requirements ask for a laboratory; the lecture alone may not satisfy them.

⚠⚠ The asterisk in a UWF prerequisite means the course may be taken at the same term

• UWF marks a concurrent course with an asterisk, defined on the catalog's Course Information page as: "This course may be taken prior to or during the same term."
• ⚠ A prerequisite written WITHOUT an asterisk must be completed first; one written WITH an asterisk may be taken in the same term. Reading an asterisked prerequisite as sequential adds a term for no reason.
• UWF also uses an explicit Co-requisite: field, the stricter form — conventionally the same term rather than prior-or-same. Both notations appear in this prefix, and in one case on opposite halves of the same pair.
• The /L notation in a prerequisite — CHM 2046/L, BSC 2011/L — means the course together with its laboratory.
• Confirm with an advisor; the registration system, not the catalog text, is what enforces it.

Course format and position in the curriculum

• Lecture with examinations.
• ⚠ No "permission is required" marking appears anywhere in the MCB prefix — enrolment is gated by prerequisites rather than by cohort admission. That is not true of the clinical programmes these courses feed into, which admit by cohort.
• UWF publishes no contact hours, lecture and laboratory split, or terms of offering for any course. Confirm the offering pattern with the department — and note that a course offered in one term only will delay a sequence by a full year if missed.

How Florida course levels affect transfer

In the Florida Statewide Course Numbering System the first digit is the level: 1 and 2 are lower division, 3 and 4 upper division, 5 and above graduate. ⚠ A lower-division course generally cannot satisfy an upper-division requirement, which matters in this prefix more than most — MCB1000, MCB2010 and MCB3020 all teach microbiology, and only MCB3020 is upper division. SCNS equivalency runs on the number and the content, so a course transfers as what it is, not as what its title resembles.

MCB1000 is 3 semester hours at the University of West Florida, through the Department of Medical Laboratory Sciences, College of Health.