Industry Bridge to Faculty in North Carolina
The June 2023 InnovATEBIO Summit encouraged community college faculty, trade organizations, economic development groups, industry partners, and others to start working together as state teams to support biotech workforce education. Team North Carolina dug right in. They worked together at the summit and continued to work on an action plan afterwards, welcoming additional colleges to join in.
Team North Carolina
The number of companies engaged in manufacturing biological products and small molecule drugs is growing in North Carolina. A growing number of community colleges have started biotechnology education programs and high schools are starting to offer BioWork certificate courses district wide.
But the size of instructor pool has stayed the same.
Team NC's efforts highlighted the need to increase the number of bioscience community college instructors in North Carolina.
Together, Team NC, comprised of Alamance Community College, Forsyth Tech, Wake Tech, Wilson Community College, Central Carolina Community College, Vance-Granville Community College, Durham Tech, Johnston Community College, and NC Life Sci developed a workshop called Industry Bridge to Faculty (IB2F) to share the benefits of teaching at a community college for those in the industry considering retirement and/or looking for part-time work.
IB2F was held at Alamance College’s Biotechnology Regional Center of Excellence on February 29th, 2024. This workshop highlighted the benefits of skilled professionals sharing industry experience at local community colleges in order to help build the life science talent pipeline and, consequently, the bioscience workforce. The workshop included a panel of bioscience industry experts currently teaching, community college faculty/department chairs, and community college alumni. Community college employment benefits were shared, student/faculty offered testimonials, and questions about working in a classroom were answered. Networking occurred before and after the panel discussion. Feedback from the audience included, “Helped understand the responsibility of resources or experience needed to teach the class. Knowing there was a framework helped me know the expectation." Ten attendees reported some interest in teaching at a community college!
Meeting night
* This event was sponsored by North Carolina Biotechnology Center (Piedmont Triad Office), NC Life Sci and InnovATEBIO