Bridge to Biotechnology

Bio-Link’s Scale-Up of the Bridge to Biotech Program

Through the Synergy Collaboratory Project

City College of San Francisco’s (CCSF) Bridge to Biotech (B2B) program is a vocational program serving underprepared students who wish to continue their education in the Biotechnology field and pursue a career in life sciences research either in Biotechnology companies, or academic or government research labs.

The B2B primarily serves economically disadvantaged students: 82% of the students who enroll in the B2B are low-income or unemployed, most of them adults with prior work experience transitioning to the biotech field (64% are over 34 years old). Diversity is another key aspect of the B2B program, with 76% African American, Asian and Hispanic students.

CCSF's B2B program has had considerable impact in the following categories.

1.  Retention: 70%

2.  Persistence: 70% of those who pass persist beyond Bridge, take twice as many units and stay in school three times longer.  Twice as many African American Bridge students persist, compared to African American Non-Bridge students.  Twice as many Filipino and Latino Bridge students pass. 

3.  Completion: Bridge students complete twice as many biotech certificates.

4.  Hiring: 30% of interns are hired by mentors after internships.

The Synergy Collaboratory (a collaborative laboratory) for Research, Practice and Transformation is funded under a grant from the National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education (NSF ATE) program through Bio-Link and focuses on equipping ATE leaders and program participants to better realize the potential scale and impact of their centers and projects.

The Synergy Collaboratory builds on research on scale up and diffusion of innovation to create and grow a national network of expertise to help projects and centers realize potential scale and impact.  As one of these 13 centers, Bio-Link chose City College of San Francisco’s Bridge to Biotech as a project to be scaled up and disseminated to other potential colleges.

Contact:  Laurence Clement, Bio-Link B2B Project Leader - lclement@ccsf.edu.

Take our needs assessment survey

For more information, join us for our Bridge to Biotech webinar on Tuesday, December 6th, 2011 at 2:30pm EST. We will be presenting the City College of San Francisco model of the Bridge to Biotech as well as Bio-Link's efforts to develop B2B programs at other community colleges. Some of these colleges, like Saint Louis Community College, will present their own adaptations of the B2B model. 

This webinar is open to all. To receive log in information, please sign-up by Friday, December 2nd, 2011 at 5pm PST by clicking here.