In this age of emerging technologies, many students and their parents have not been exposed to the great variety of careers open to them. Career exploration is taking on an increasingly important role in community college programs. The Centers Collaborative for Technical Assistance (CCTA) hosted a host a webinar on Career Exploration and provided examples of career exploration tools that are available to students, teachers, faculty members, counselors and others who are interested in assisting students make wise career choices. A recording of the webinar can be found on the CCTA website.
Elaine Johnson, PI and Executive Director ... Read more
Presenters: Carole Twichell and Bridgette Kirkpatrick Take a look at a great classroom activity/exam question about restriction enzymes. The learning objectives for the activity are: •Proper use of restriction endonucleases •Tying restriction fragmentation to electrophoresis •Critical Thinking •Use of internet resources Students will need to develop strategies using only restriction endonucleases and electrophoresis to solve plasmid cloning problems. Read more
Presenters: Bridgette Kirkpatrick & Carole Twichell Description: We will present a classroom activity that can be used to teach plasmid cloning and the use of the CRISPR/Cas9 system for gene editing. The activity uses paper models to illustrate the action of restriction endonucleases, ligation, and recognition and cleavage by CRISPR/Cas9. Participants will receive materials and instructions to take back to their institutions. Read more
Presenters: Elaine Johnson, Bio-Link Director and the Bio-Link Leadership Team: Linnea Fletcher, Sandra Porter, Lisa Seidman, Jeanette Mowery & Bart Gledhill Read more
Presenters: Jeanette Mowery and Lisa Seidman Agenda •Introduction; reproducibility in science, a contemporary hot topic •The causes of irreproducibility that everyone talks about •The causes of irreproducibility that we talk about – but they don’t •Bio-Linker’s contributions to the discussion •A call to action – what comes next? Read more
Presenter: James Guenther 6/7/2017 This session is intended to give an overview of the process used by many entrepreneurs, and pioneered by Steve Blank. Each section of the "business model canvas" will be discussed and related back to new business startups or how a biotechnology program is a really a small business startup. Participants are encouraged to come with business or product ideas that can be explored in the session. Presented 6/7/2017 Read more
Presenter: Ellyn Daugherty Learn how to use hard and soft (laboratory) skills and authentic assessment to prepare students to enter adult bioscience workplace experiences. Since 1995, The San Mateo Biotechnology Career Pathway (SMBCP) has placed over 1000 students in paid and unpaid internships at one of their 25 local biotechnology partner facilities. SMBCP courses prepare students of all academic levels to enter industry and academic biotech lab facilities and function as productive individuals and team members. Part of the success of the SMBCP program is that students are evaluated in methods similar to those in industry. This session will share ... Read more
Presenter: Vivian Ngan-Winward, PhD, CMQOE The in vitro diagnostics sector should be very familiar to the Bio-Link community with products such as test kits and analyzer instrumentation. Changing regulations now impacting this sector mean companies will need to adapt their quality systems and increase internal competencies. The salient regulatory changes will be presented and those where biotech educators may be able to work with companies to address will be highlighted. In addition, industry-critical career tracks alternative to the traditional research and manufacturing paths and how biotech educators can prepare students for these will be presented. Presented 6/6/2017 Read more
Bio-Link Webinar: Third Party Certification & Entry-Level Certificates in Biotechnology was presented 3pm ET on Friday, May 12, 2017. A recording of the webinar is available on YouTube, and slides for the event are also available
Speakers from several areas will share their experiences and discuss student outcomes:
Tamara Mandell, Lori Wojciechowski, from Biotility(link is external) will describe how the exam is administered and the historical outcomes.
Jeff Bush, Vero Beach High School, Florida, and Fiona McAlister, PhD., Southern Oklahoma Technology Center, OK, will talk about their experiences.
Neil Glynn, PhD, and Joe Wuerffel, ... Read more
Presenters : Linda Rehfuss, Jeanette Mowery, Lisa Seidman, Elaine Johnson, Linnea Fletcher In 2016, the Community College Consortium for Bioscience Credentials, funded by a Department of Labor grant, published a set of core technical skills and competencies that are held in common across the bioscience industry subsectors of Bioscience Laboratory Skills, Biomanufacturing, and Medical Devices. Consortium partners recognized the need to focus skill standards efforts on fundamentals that all entry-level bioscience technician would need in order to succeed, regardless of industry subsector, geographic location or individual job description. This webinar will discuss how these new skill standards can be valuable ... Read more
Together CRISPR and Cas provide bacteria with an adaptive immune system that allows them to identify and defend against new viral invaders. While characterizing the basic biology of this system, researchers discovered that the Cas9 protein could be harnessed to engineer genomic DNA. In this session, we discuss the basic biology of the CRISPR / Cas system and discuss how researchers are using this system in new ways to engineer living things. Presenters : Thomas Tubon, Ph.D. Madison College, WI Sandra Porter, Ph.D. Bio-Link, Digital World Biology LLC Read more
Tom Tubon leads a discussion of CSO strengths, programs and partnership strategies. Panelists: Sandra Porter (Bio-Link), Bryony Ruegg (Bio-Rad), and Abbe Kesterson (Bluegrass Community and Technical College), and James Guenther (Delgado Community College) Read more
Dr. V. Celeste Carter takes a step by step journey through the Grant Review process at the National Science Foundation so that the audience can see what NSF reviewers are really looking for in an application.
Read more
These presentations are from a grant writing workshop at Austin Community College. Dr. V. Celeste Carter from the National Science Foundation was the guest speaker.
Read more
The National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education program is a powerful economic driver for biotechnology programs at community colleges. This presentation by V. Celeste Carter provides background and context on the program to add to colleges' grant writing efforts. Read more
