Milk is a staple in the school cafeteria, and most students easily recognize the label that indicates the contents are pasteurized. In this Pathways to Your Future lab activity, Dr. Anne Vardo-Zalick, Assistant Professor of Biology, teaches students about the importance of milk pasteurization. Dr. Vardo-Zalick leads students in performing basic microbiology techniques, and guides them in plating diluted samples of pasteurized and ultra-pasteurized milk onto different agar plates. By seeing the reaction and bacteria growth on the agar, the students clearly see the importance of pasteurization and the difference between pasteurization processes. This experiment also demonstrates how microbiological media can be used to highlight the presence of specific pathogen-causing microbes.