Fine Focus


6  I  Fine Focus

Objective Lens 

John L. McKillip, Managing Editor, Fine Focus 
Professor, Microbiology, Ball State University



 Vol 8  I  7 

Fine Focus was not only the first international journal for 
undergraduate microbiology research, but also the  
Ball State University Chapter of the American Society for 
Microbiology (BSUASM) – that is, a campus recognized 
student organization, and an honor’s course at BSU. 
Students in both the club and the class manage the journal 
in all ways – from stewardship of our double-blind peer 
review system for manuscript management (via our OJS 
– Open Journal System) – to marketing, promotion, and 
design changes inside and out on the physical print copy 
of each issue. This new issue represents a completely new 
design for Fine Focus. For example, the artwork on the cover 
and on each title page is an original watercolor by one of 
our student Marketing Team conveners, Sharon Cung. 
This design represents the industrially important yeast 
Saccharomyces cerevisiae, as explained further inside the front 
cover. Since our inception in 2013, Fine Focus is managed as 
an “immersive learning” course at BSU – that is, a product-
based course with the following unique attributes:

• A project offered to undergraduate students for 
academic credit

• Is conducted under the guidance of a faculty mentor

• Fills a need or solves a problem for a community partner

• Results in a specific outcome or deliverable

• Is conducted by a team or teams of undergraduate 
students (in classes of 10 or more) working 
collaboratively

These faculty-led, student-driven team model puts the 
students at the helm of day-to-day decision making (1).  
What better way to further introduce the effectiveness of this 
model than to introduce you to the team of students who 
put together the issue you are reading now. Their profiles are 
on the following pages.