"It's all about saving Aunt Millie" – Bob Swanson Co-Founder of Genentech. Jim DeKloe wrote this post as a guest author a few years ago. Jim is one of the most inspirational educators I know and he's the sort of person that reminds you why educating students about biotechnology careers ...
Blogging from Bio-Link, part III[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"2636","attributes":{"class":"media-image","typeof":"foaf:Image","style":"","alt":"i-6acc85780a72ebc76de64b3369707f04-clock.jpg"}}]] High school teachers have different techniques for selling their students on the benefits of science and math. When some high school instructors step in front of a class, the quiet demeanor gets put away and another persona steps out - the USED-CAR SALESMAN SCIENCE EVANGELIST ...
It must be spring. Summer course announcements are popping up everywhere and this site is no exception. Last Friday, I posted an announcement about our summer bioinformatics course in Alaska, June 27-29th. This week, I have a couple more conferences to announce. Naturally, I'll be at both of them, leading ...
Last week I attended my first NSF ATE PI meeting. As a contributing member of Digital World Biology's ATE project entitled " A Bridge to Bio-Link's Future," I participated in the conference by preparing and staffing our booth in the first evening's showcase.
Like everything else, if we want to know what's going on, we have to ask. So, it's time once again for the 2011-2012 National Biotechnology/Life Sciences Program Survey. Yes, indeed. Federal and state agencies will use the results to determine how best to support programs like yours. This study will ...
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"2632","attributes":{"class":"media-image","typeof":"foaf:Image","style":"","alt":"i-d336adebb31e5453376e5d20cec6c970-ck_yarrow.jpg"}}]] Blogging from Bio-Link, part I I am currently in Berkeley attending the 2006 Bio-Link summer fellows' workshop. It's hard to believe that it's been eight years since the first workshop was held. We're still meeting here in the same lovely Clark Kerr Center and I'm still, as every year ...
Students in the United States take many convoluted and unnecessarily complicated paths when it comes to finding careers in biotechnology. If Universities and community colleges worked together, an alternative path could benefit all parties; students, schools, industry, and the community. The image below illustrates the current paths and the approximate ...
Over the years, I've seen many biotechnology education programs at community colleges embrace outreach to high schools as part of their mission. This kind of enthusiasm for outreach seems unique to biotech. No other kind of science or engineering program seems to do this sort of thing, at least not ...
If all the information you had about scientific careers came from newspapers or TV, it would be easy to think that everyone who works in life sciences / biotechnology is either a Ph.D. scientist, post-doc, or graduate student. In reality, the life sciences are more like an iceberg. The public ...
What roles should community colleges play in training the bioeconomy workforce of the future? Send your answers to bioeconomy@ostp.gov by Dec. 6th. One night towards the end of October, we happened to meet with someone who could tell us more. We asked him about a request for information (RFI) soliciting ...
Back in March, we [Digital World Biology, Bio-Link.org, and the AC2 Bio-Link Regional Center] hosted a panel discussion at the ABRF annual meeting to introduce community colleges to ABRF and vise versa. I am pleased to report that the session was a great success.
GenomeWeb reports that OKCC and the University of Utah's Genetic Science Learning Center received NIH funds for genomics and bioinformatics education projects, respectively. Congratulations are certainly due to the University of Utah. For a community college, on the other hand, to get NIH funding is very unusual and OKCC should ...
Well, I had to test Scribd with something. Why not use a document on the Massachusetts Life Sciences Industry? Scribd is sort of like the YouTube of electronic paper. I found Scribd from TomJoe's post about Life on Mars. His PowerPoint talk is really much more interesting than the life ...
A little over ten years ago, Dr. Elaine Johnson obtained funding from the National Science Foundation to start Bio-Link, an Advanced Technology Education center, focused on biotechnology. Since that time, Dr. Johnson has become a national leader in biotech education, enlisting the country's top educators and industry captains to ensure ...
I'm in Berkeley right now at the annual Bio-Link Summer Fellows forum. We're getting to hear talks from people in the biotech industry, listen to enthusiastic instructors describe their biotech programs and ideas, and try out new educational materials. Yesterday, two speakers (Damon Tighe and Jason Baumohl) from the Joint ...
It only takes a quick trip to the grocery store to see that familiar jobs are vanishing. Unless you're in Oregon, grocery store checkers are going the way of gas station attendants, travel agents, and secretaries. Jobs are changing, new jobs require different skills, and even those jobs will be ...
Science Blogs has asked: What makes a good science teacher? Many of the science teachers that I've met can't really be described by the adjective "good." The better fitting words are: great, marvelous, inspiring, and fantastic. But, SBer's want to know, " what makes them so great?" Right? I've compiled ...
A simple web search says biotech is really big. One estimate indicates that the industry will have $400 billion in sales in 2017 with growth to over $775 billion by 2024 [1]. Another report suggests there are over 77,000 employers [2]. That’s big, but is it real, and what you ...
Last summer, I had the good fortune to attend a conference in Washington D.C. on Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology education. There were lots of inspiring speeches, cool videos, and talks about building more student-centered classrooms and strategies for change. Surprisingly, many of the attendees seemed unaware that there ...
Why should students blog about science? Don't they have enough to do already? Last Thursday night I participated in a panel discussion about science blogging (see the video) at ScienceOnline Seattle ( #scioSEA)(video) and mentioned that we have two students blogging for us at Bio-Link. A question I saw afterward ...
Many regions in the United States, and the world for that matter, are seeking to entice biotech companies to relocate. As Lorraine Ruff and David Gabrilska describe in their Genetic Engineering News Article, " Metrics for Economic Development," the exhibitors at meetings like BIO work hard to: ".. entice founders ...
This October (9-11, 2019), I attended the 3rd NIBLSE conference entitled: "Integration of Bioinformatics into Life Science Education: Roadmap for the Future." It was held at " Hot Shops" in Omaha Nebraska, a space for artists to work, sell, and meet.
Long Branch, NJ, is a lovely town on the Atlantic Ocean, with long beaches and brand new shops and condos. It is also part of an area in, central New Jersey, where biotechnology education is entering an exciting time thanks to efforts of NJBEC, Bio-1, and a WIRED grant from ...
Congratulations to George Cachianes (who I've written about before), his amazing students from Abraham Lincoln High School, and collaborators at UCSF! These students, from a public high school no less, placed in the top 6 finalists, along with only one other US team. The other top teams were: Peking University ...
Yet another Bio-Link blog post. [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"2641","attributes":{"class":"media-image","typeof":"foaf:Image","style":"","alt":"i-8d565ab60bb22abb6b2c9703da7d73c1-bridge_group.jpg"}}]] The San Francisco bay area has experienced phenomenal growth in both the number of biotech companies and the need to find employees. But, no matter how many attractions entice potential employees to move to the Bay Area, they still face the problem of finding ...
We often see memorials written about famous scientists, but we rarely see them about the people who work in the background to help people learn the science in the first place. Ron was one of those people whose work inspired teachers and helped spark excitement in science students throughout the ...
Bio-Link is accepting applications for this year's National Summer Fellows forum, June 2-6th, in Berkeley, CA. You can get an application at www.bio-link.org I'll be there, doing some kind of bioinformatics workshop. I'll probably be talking about either metagenomics or comparing protein structures and drug resistance, but if you have ...
Every June, an incredible event takes place. Biotechnology educators gather in Berkeley, California, from across the US, to discuss new trends in biotechnology education, learn from each other and share information about educating students for the biotechnology workforce. There are tours of local biotech companies like Genentech and local research ...
What skills does a biotechnology technician need to know? This seems like a simple question, but people have been struggling to define biotech skill standards since the early 90's. Complicating this question is that many areas of biotechnology require somewhat different skills. Antibody work requires one set, plant or animal ...
In part I, I wrote about the shortage of technicians in the biotechnology industry and the general awareness that this problem is getting worse. This part will address the challenge of getting more students into programs that will prepare them for jobs in the biotech field. I've also been asked ...
Community colleges are such extraordinary places that even California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger credits his time at Santa Monica community college as one of the secrets to his success. From the SF Chronicle: "People always ask me 'What is the secret of your success?' " he said Tuesday. "I always say ...
