Supporting Biotechnology Companies While, At the Same Time, Providing An Educational Opportunity to Both Faculty and Students

One of the hot topics discussed at this year's Bio-Link Summer Fellows was the increasing number of programs that are starting contract research organizations (CROs) in order to meet the internship needs of students and at the same time, help companies with projects; especially start-ups.  

Based on discussions at this meeting, it became obvious that programs have, and are, establishing CROs and other related programs, with and without the benefit of funding and not disseminating this information. As such, Tami Goetz and I (Linnea Fletcher) volunteered to collect this information and write at least one article about this activity in Biotechnology Programs at community colleges. To this end, we would appreciate any information, articles, etc that you have in order for us to prepare a more informed article. 

If you have files (e.g. articles or description of programs), please send this information to Linnea Fletcher at linneaf@austincc.edu; if you are interested in being another author on this paper please contact me; or, if you have thoughts or ideas and would like to provide comments, do so to this blog. Also,drafts of this article will be posted while it is being written so that you can provide comments.

Remember, the saying that we tell our students to get them to write in their lab notebooks, "if it is not written down, it does not exist!" --well this is also true for what we do at the community colleges ---so let's publish more.