It is common for states across America to adopt official symbols that are used for representation. For example, states may have an official state tree, animal, flower, and song. Ohio has at least 25 state symbols, including a state beverage and a state fossil. At this time it does not yet have a state microbe. There is only one state that currently has an official microbe. Oregon has chosen Saccharomyces cerevisiae, commonly referred to as brewer's and baker's yeast, because of the state's brewing industry and many craft breweries. Three other states have selected a microbe and are pursuing legislation to have the microbe officially recognized. After learning of the stories surrounding the microbes selected in other states, I decided to introduce this as a unique service learning project into my upper‐level microbiology course at Otterbein University. This is a writing intensive course that serves as an upper‐level elective for Biology as well as Biochemistry and Molecular Biology majors. Each student was required to choose a microbe that they felt represented Ohio and write a persuasive paper on the topic. Six of these microbes were then selected for a vote by the general public. While the students in the course learned about many new microbes and fulfilled their writing requirements for the course, the major service goal of the project was to educate the public about microbiology, especially the fact that there are beneficial microbes. Microbes and their beneficial roles were presented to the public in a fun, educational way via social media. This multi‐disciplinary project involved many departments at Otterbein, including Biology and Earth Science, Communication, and History and Political Science, as well as the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Program. The American Society for Microbiology and American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Student Chapters both played a vital role in relaying the information to the public and organizing events. Currently the “Microbe Term Election” is almost finished, and the next step is to write the winning “candidate microbe” into legislation. The “campaign” has been largely successful in its goals and has gained the support of various organizations, colleges and universities throughout Ohio and allowed the participation of the general public, including K‐12 classrooms in the voting process. The service learning initiative will continue throughout the year with a general education microbiology course in Spring 2019. The selection of an official state microbe is anticipated to continue to spark the public interest in microbiology and biochemistry, as people learn how microbes are beneficial and how they fulfill their important roles.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.