How States Can Foster and Expand Biotech Industry Development

The third Integrate Bio Education objective focuses on enhancing the science elements of K-12 education in order to increase the supply of future technicians and scientists needed for their future aspirations.

Finally here are five imperatives needed by partners in education, policy and industry to prepare students for the workplace in our industry:

#1) Industry involvement is absolutely essential. This is perhaps the most universally held success factor found across programs in the best practices states. As one program director explained: “Because they work so closely with industry, the students are trained exactly as industry needs them.” The disconnect between bioscience employers and educational institutions in sharing information, setting priorities, and developing needed programs continues to be an issue.

#2 A broad and diverse range of students must be trained.  Building an effective educational pipeline for the biosciences requires both traditional community college to 4 year degree program linkages as well as continuing education courses for those who have already having earned an associate’s degree in the biosciences and looking to advance their careers with additional coursework.

In addition, limited awareness by communities-particularly school-age youth and those seeking new careers- of the opportunities to pursue bioscience careers, and a need for proactive steps to increase access to these career opportunities, especially in minority populations needs to be addressed by both industry and educators.

#3) Challenges in developing curricula for bioscience workforce and career development. Unlike IT certification, biotech lab technicians, biomanufacturing, agricultural biotech, and biomedical engineering lack national certifications.  Given the lack of standardization in defining skills and techniques, it is important to have resources available to support continual development of curricula.

#4 Difficulties in experiential learning and internships are real.  For bioscience positions, it is often difficult to place students in traditional internship programs because of regulatory requirements and the size of companies.  Other approaches to experiential learning and exposure to industry need to be developed, such as having industry instructors, creating pilot facilities, and focusing on capstone projects. 

#5) Lack of statewide coordination wastes resources.  A patchwork of programmatic efforts with little scale or strategic focus makes it difficult to gain resources to support the growth of needed programs.  Those states that have a roadmap and funding to support efforts will be the place where companies will want to locate.