"Taking Delaware's Biotechnology Education to the Next Level" is helping to meet workforce demand in the region's growing biotechnology industry by expanding and enhancing educational capacity at Delaware Technical and Community College. The project is upgrading basic laboratory facilities, offering faculty professional development opportunities, and establishing a new focus on research methodologies in the biotechnology associate degree program that includes student research internships. Faculty are preparing to teach advanced biotechnology and upper-level science courses by participating in workshops, conferences, and semi-annual meetings relevant to the new curricula. Statewide in-service workshops for secondary school science teachers are improving their technical skills and providing them with up-to-date science content and laboratory experiences that they can incorporate into their courses. This, in turn, is resulting in better preparation of secondary students for the biotechnology program at the community college level. In response to the range of training needs in the region's labor markets, the biotechnology curriculum is being enhanced to include a new focus on research methodology. Biotechnology students are being introduced to the basic concepts and methodology of research in a new first-year course. Further training in research methodologies, including internships in regional biotechnology companies, is being integrated across the curriculum. The project is providing equipment necessary to support the enhanced curriculum, such as spectrophotometers, electronic balances and thermocyclers. The project's broader impacts include its focus on addressing regional workforce needs and on increasing opportunities for underrepresented groups to pursue STEM education and career pathways. A multi-tiered evaluation program includes periodic meetings with a statewide and a national advisory committee. These committees are being informed by evaluation reports prepared by an external consultant based on data collected from a number of instruments designed to assess the outcomes and impacts of specific project activities. Educational materials, evaluation instruments and assessment results are being shared with the general academic community via presentations at local, regional and national conferences, journal publications, and via the national Bio-Link network's website and summer fellows program.
