California Biomedical Industry - California Healthcare Institute

StanfordSummer research program re-energizes teachersStanford’s Summer Research Programfor Teachers offers eight-week researchfellowships for middle school, high schooland community college teachers workingin the San Francisco Bay Area. Teacherswork in a Stanford lab four days a week,and meet once a week as a group forscience and engineering lectures byStanford faculty, lab tours, and seminarson teaching.The purpose of this program is tore-energize teachers, expose them toa broad array of scientific fields, givethem in-depth, hands-on researchexperience, and send them back to theirclasses filled with more confidenceand enthusiasm and increasedknowledge about the world of scienceand engineering research and itsapplications.Teachers receive a stipend of $7,200and are eligible for five units of StanfordContinuing Studies credits and anadditional $1,000 in grants. This isan intensive program that requiresparticipants to be on campus 40 hoursper week.Beginning in summer 2010, anResearch Experiences for Teachers(RET) Site award from the NationalScience Foundation will fund eightadditional teachers per summer ina complementary program calledSERET-Stanford Engineering ResearchExperience for Teachers. SERETteachers will be incorporated intothe Summer Research Program forTeachers but may have slightly differentplacements and program requirements.Since 2005:••Stanford has sponsored 117 SummerFellowships involving 77 individualscience teachers.••Stanford has hosted teachers from66 schools (54 public, 12 charter orprivate) in 29 districts in the BayArea.••Forty-two percent of these Fellowsteach in high-needs schools with alarge proportion of educationallydisadvantaged students historicallyunderrepresented in STEM.••Stanford Summer Fellowships havereached over 40,000 students.••Teacher retention has been quitehigh. A 2008 survey found that 94percent of all program alumni arestill in education, representing only2 percent annual attrition fromteaching.Community colleges provide avenue to biotech careersWhen AndreaCortezimmigratedto the BayArea from thePhilippines10 years agoat age 33,imaginedworking at a prominent biotechnologycompany like Genentech. But with nolocal network, a limited understandingof biotechnology and only a desire tosucceed, she could not land the job ofher dreams.All that changed after she tookher first courses at City College ofSan Francisco. Now a Senior PilotPlant Technician at Genentech’sSouth San Francisco facility, Cortezfirmly believes that her course workat the community college laid thegroundwork for her employment.“I tried several times to get a job in abiotech company,” said Cortez. “TheCity College courses were very helpful inunderstanding how the biotech industryworks.”The City College of San FranciscoProgram has educated and certifiedthousands of students who have gainedemployment in the biotech sector. Itssuccess is enhanced by San FranciscobasedBio-Link, a National AdvancedTechnology Education Center ofExcellence focused on biotechnologyand life sciences. Bio-Link has receivedmajor funding from the NationalScience Foundation since 1998. Bio-Link connects students and job seekers,it connects instructors and communitycolleges, and it connects biotechemployers to other programs. Nearly100 biotechnology programs acrossthe Nation have provided professionaldevelopment for faculty who serve morethan 40,000 students per year.“Bio-Link provides opportunitiesfor students to get networked,” saidCortez. “I was benefitting from theBio-Link activities.”Several biotechnology programs inCalifornia have utilized a numberof different industry interactions toprovide more hands on learning forstudents. At Contra Costa College,four specialized biotech courses aretaught by industry representativesfrom Bayer, Bio-Rad, Novartis andGenentech. Similar courses aretaught at other colleges includingCity College of San Francisco,Foothill College, and OhloneCollege. Skyline and Solano Collegeinstructors interned at Genentechand several programs regularlyvisit the Department of EnergyJoint Genome Institute and othermanufacturing facilities throughoutthe region.60 | California Biomedical Industry 2011 Report