Dr. Jeremy Bechelli and I recently integrated the Small World Initiative curriculum into the laboratory portion of the General Microbiology course. The Small World Initiative is an innovative program that encourages students to pursue careers in science while addressing a worldwide health threat – superbugs and the diminishing supply of effective antibiotics. As part of the curriculum, students isolate and characterize antibiotic producing bacteria isolated from soil samples.  While students in the class do the initial characterization, my research lab is interested in further characterizing these isolated in hope to identify novel antibiotics.