City College of San Francisco - California Competes

THEME V
Several years ago, the Dean of Science and Mathematics recognized the need for a new full-time instructor
for the Biotechnology Program and he helped win support for hiring one of the current coordinators of
the program. The Biotechnology Program invites representatives from industry to teach short-term courses
or give lectures in courses and fortunately is able to fund them as consultants through grant money.
Biotechnology is one of the academic programs requiring a master’s degree in the field or an equivalency
as a minimum qualification for teaching. This state requirement will make it difficult to hire some
industry representatives, who have up-to-date knowledge of the field but do not have a master’s degree,
if the program loses grant funding to hire these instructors on a consultant basis. The program needs to
explore how the equivalency process will help them hire these experts if grant funding diminishes.
Constant retraining of faculty is essential to enable them to stay current in the biotechnology field.
Bio-Link funding supported sending one of the program coordinators for training in Summer 2004,
but more professional development funding is needed.
The Biotechnology Program is an interdisciplinary program. In addition to courses in the Biology
Department, the program also includes courses offered by the ESL Department, the Transitional Studies
Department, the Math Department, and the Chemistry Department. The Biomanufacturing certificate
program began with a collaboration between Chemistry and Biology and will eventually collaborate
with Engineering and Computer Technology as well. Collaboration among these departments has been
very good so far, but the College’s main organizational structure for offering instructional programs is
through departments that are grouped into schools. For example, departments make budget requests
via their school, and departments make requests for hiring faculty. Interdisciplinary programs such
as Biotechnology may need extra support to learn ways to request supplies, equipment, faculty, and
reassigned time for coordination and so forth.
A lot of coordination is needed to manage the grants that the program receives and to keep the program
going. Departments have chairs and also have the opportunity to ask for reassigned time from teaching
duties for faculty to coordinate programs. Fortunately, so far grant funding is supporting the Biotech
program coordinators so the Biology Department has not yet needed to request coordinating units for
Biotechnology. Grant funding has also supported the coordinator of the Bridge to Biotech program, who
is responsible for recruiting, assessing, advising and providing orientation for students, and for general
administrative duties.
The coordinator for the Bridge to Biotech program has invited financial aid and Disabled Students
Programs and Services (DSPS) representatives to speak to students in the program. Other than this,
those we interviewed were not aware of how much biotechnology students use Counseling, Learning
Resources, and other support services at the College.
The need for equipment, labs, and offices for Biotech has been reported in the Annual Plan report.
Currently, most biotechnology courses are offered at the Ocean Avenue Campus. The Bridge to Biotech
program courses are offered at the Southeast and Mission Campuses, and the On-Ramp to Biotech
program is offered at the Southeast Campus. Block grant funding was used to develop the lab at the
Southeast Campus. Space has been allocated for the Bridge to Biotechnology Program in the planned
new Chinatown Campus and Mission Campus buildings. The program has support from the Vice
Chancellor of Academic Affairs for developing a Biotech Center in the Science Building.
322 CITY COLLEGE OF SAN FRANCISCO