CCSF-UCSF A Collaborative Approach to Work-Based Learning

Project Updates: 

Project Description:

A collaborative ATE grant between the Biotechnology Program at City College of San Francisco (CCSF) & the Office of Career Planning & Development at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) to develop and disseminate trainings and tools to build inclusive lab environments to support access and success for community college biotechnology students in the science workforce.

From 2018-2021 this CCSF-UCSF collaboration & ATE grant (DUE #1801186, 1800998) led to:

  • Development of a comprehensive training program for internship mentors who wish to counter inequities in the lab and a parallel training for community college students to navigate barriers to inclusivity in the workplace, both utilizing practical tools to operationalize inclusivity in the lab

  • A published framework for inclusive bioscience workplace practices in academic labs

  • A novel CCSF-UCSF Inclusive Mentoring Fellows program, in which UCSF internship mentors are coached as they apply inclusive workplace practices while mentoring CCSF interns.

  • An expanded discussion of work-based learning to include how mentors and their labs build mentoring, training and supervising skills when working with community college students. Working with community college students is thereby fundamentally professional development for lab members which can ultimately lead to increased lab productivity while simultaneously diversifying and sustaining their workforce with people from the local community.   

Our ATE project grant (2021-2024, DUE #2055735, 2055309) will: 

  • Translate our trainings for biotechnology community college students and mentor-managers from an academic to an industry setting 

  • Disseminate those trainings nationwide to community college students and biotech/bioscience mentor-managers through online platforms to foster the knowledge & skills needed to operationalize inclusivity and reduce barriers for community college students in the biotech workplace 

 

Resources developed through this project can be found on the Collaborative for Work-Based Learning Website

Articles about our UCSF-CCSF internship mentor-mentees and their experiences can be found here.

SRI Education group webinar highlighting this work as an example of "targeted coaching skills that both technician instructors and employers need to know to be successful" here.

2020 HI-TEC Presentation: Engaging Industry: Promoting Equity, Access & Inclusivity for Increased Retention and Productivity

2021 HI-TEC Presentation: Empowering Student to Recognize & Foster More Inclusive Workplaces

 

Project PI: 
James Lewis
Host Organization: City College of San Francisco
Other Collaborators: 

University of California, San Francisco

Project Contact Info: 
City College of San Francisco San Francisco CA