Education

Now more than ever we are turning to eLearning to develop new skills! The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides online training for public health laboratory professionals. This Microbiology eLearning Series contains five eLearning courses and covers basic microbiology laboratory skills and procedures necessary to identify microorganisms from clinical specimens. Job aids and laboratory exercises are included so participants may work with a supervisor/mentor to comprehend and perform proper microbiology techniques.

The five courses are:

In June 2019, a group of STEM educators from across the country came together to discuss a widely-misunderstood approach to laboratory work: design of experiments (DOE). DOE is a system that optimizes processes through the methodical varying of key parameters and a formalized statistical approach to analyzing and interpreting data, and applying the results. However, as it is not commonly used in academia outside of engineering fields, many STEM educators have little to no experience with DOE.

MiraCosta College’s biotechnology faculty and the Dean of Math and Sciences gave STEM educators an opportunity... Read more

The Allen Institute for Cell Science has been busy! Two new resources are now available for everyone to explore cells. Here is what the Institute says about their new offerings.

The Allen Integrated Cell summarizes a large collection of live human stem cells, gene edited by Allen Institute scientists to incorporate fluorescent protein tags. By allowing researchers around the world to see many structures inside a living cell together at the same time, the Allen Integrated Cell provides a baseline for understanding cells, studying human disease models, and identifying pathologies.

To see something really amazing,... Read more

Biotech is more than just science... it is business.

Because biotech is creating useful products via biological systems, business is a very important part. In the post-bacc program, we have a weekly business class where we learn about the basics of business organization and management.

Earlier in the program we completed an 8-week project where we had to create a mock company and sell a product. At the end of the 8 weeks we were expected to present our companies at a mock venture capital fair. At the fair, students from the associates program would invest in our... Read more