Metro Community College student Evie Eveleth, 31, wants to help people with genetic conditions, which can range from inconvenient to terminal. But with tools like CRISPR to edit genes, Eveleth hopes to make a difference.

Now, MCC has an initiative that can support Eveleth’s goal and prepare her for the kind of skills she will need for serious lab work. The new biotechnology training program, unveiled on March 10 at the college’s Elkhorn Valley Campus, will launch this fall.

“I’ve already started incorporating what the classes for this program will look like in my college career moving forward,” Eveleth said at the unveiling event. “I have about a year and a half left, and I believe it’ll fit what I need like a glove. So I have every intention of enrolling in the fall.”

Nebraska has a thriving biotechnology and manufacturing industry, with companies like Streck, Cargill and Zoetis creating essential products that range from blood-testing tools and fuel-grade ethanol to animal vaccines and livestock feed. Biomanufacturing can mean creating products from natural materials like corn or through biological processes via organisms like bacteria or yeast.

But at an Omaha biomanufacturing conference in 2023, Jackie Clifford, a biology instructor at MCC, saw up close that the industry needed support. MCC officials started working with Streck and quickly realized the best way to help was with a workforce training program.

“They weren’t able to find enough trained workforce … and so it evolved and kind of snowballed into a full associate program training,” said Clifford, who is now the director of the biotechnology program. 

“We’ve worked closely with our industry partners to find what knowledge, skills and abilities they need,” she said. “So that’s what this program is for: to train people to be entry-level technicians in the biotech industry.”

A major investment

The new program is built for flexibility, with offerings ranging from micro-credentials, two certificate levels that can be completed within a year and an associate degree that can be finished in about two years. 

Each level stacks, so certificate education will also count toward the associate degree. Clifford sees a wide variety of students who can benefit from the program, which will set them up for high-paying careers.

“Who belongs in biotech? It’s not just for people who are really interested in science, but if you’re really hands-on … you learn better by doing things — biotechnology is a good fit,” Clifford said.

MCC’s work is supported by a three-year, $770,663 grant from the National Science Foundation. But the centerpiece of the biotechnology program may be the roughly $3 million lab being built on the Elkhorn Valley Campus, modeled after real industry facilities that MCC staff have visited.

“This is going to mimic what (graduates are) going to do in business areas and labs,” said Chris Kriegler, MCC’s director of campus development overseeing the lab construction.

“Some of those skills just being, how do you get gowned up? How do you prep things?” he said. “Taking (students) right in so they’re ready for the workforce, and then maybe the workforce doesn’t have to teach them those intro things that you’d have to learn your first six months at a company.”

The facility, which will offer a general lab as well as a mammalian culture cell lab, protein lab and bioreactor lab, is repurposing part of MCC’s maintenance garage. Kriegler expects the facility to be complete by the end of May. 

During tours of the facility construction, students were excited about the lab space, from its possibilities to the physical infrastructure MCC is installing. Labs require equipment for clean air and purified water, specialty dishwashers to clean beakers and tools like UV spectrometers. 

This one will also give the impression that the floors and walls are melted together, once they are coated with epoxy for a smooth surface that is easy to clean. “I’m excited to see how everything looks, especially the polished walls,” said Megene Lujendo, 21, a student at MCC. “I like everything a little polished.”

Lujendo wants to work in biotech and was impressed by the seven companies that tabled at the MCC unveiling event. She has been talking with Streck about a summer internship program and sees a world of possibility in the industry.

“To see all the different types of biotech companies, that made me excited to (learn) how biotech really affects everything that we have,” Lujendo said. “That’s eventually my goal: to find a job in one of these companies.”

In fall 2027, MCC also aims to offer its biotechnology classes to high school students. Some of the program will also focus on interactive camps and lessons for elementary and middle schoolers to help teach them about innovation and science.

Meeting industry needs

Jim Walla is a process development engineer at Evonik, which makes products ranging from feed supplements for livestock to an algae-based oil used as an alternative to fish oil. He also serves as the industry lead for MCC’s Business and Industry Leadership Team (BILT), where he has had a front-row seat to the development of the biotechnology program.

“What we’re looking for is essentially baseline technical competencies, reducing onboarding time with bringing in new employees,” he said. “A strong desire to learn, being adaptable to emerging technologies and being comfortable with scientific concepts — you don’t necessarily have to have a large science background to be successful with this.”

For Kim Whiteside, a workforce instructional designer at MCC, that also means a focus on soft skills like critical thinking, problem solving and even business ethics. She wants to give students the tools to understand how they work best so they are ready for industry jobs.

Building the right curriculum for industry is all about good communication. “The curriculum can be a bit of a moving target, because industry changes so quickly,” Whiteside said. “Sometimes, by the time we get finished … what the industry needs might be slightly different.”

For MCC students, the biotechnology program feels like the right stepping stone to fulfill their career aspirations. Robert Churchill, 32, who is finishing up the last quarter of his associate degree, aims to transfer to the molecular biology program at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

But the new program is attractive enough that Churchill is talking with Clifford about finding a way to take classes at both MCC and UNO, giving him a leg up for an eventual Ph.D. “It would still be a good opportunity to (build) on that career of working with biological systems, molecular biology and that kind of area of expertise,” he said.

Lev Gringauz is a Report for America corps member who writes about corporate innovation and workforce development for Silicon Prairie News.