I completed my bachelor’s in Colombia, and wanted to study Biotech, but we don’t have many Biotech programs in Colombia, so I decided to come to the US to improve my English and then study Biotech. My biggest concern was that I didn’t have much experience working and that could be a disadvantage while looking for jobs.
I enrolled in the Biotech program at CCSF because it has a lot of on-hands classes that I wanted to take before enrolling into a graduate program. All those classes gave me more confidence in my lab skills, because I was doing lab experiments every week in every class and this also helped me with the improvement of the English related to my field.
What I liked the most about the program was that the classes were small, so we had a lot of one on one interaction with the teachers, and that is very helpful because not everyone has the same skills when working in the lab, so they helped us all individually to develop ourselves to the best of our capacities during the classes. While I was working, I realized that some of my coworkers had the knowledge about different topics but didn’t have good skills while working inside the lab, so they had to practice more than I did to satisfy the requisites of the task.
All the new skills that I developed, were very important while looking for jobs after I completer the certificates.
Completing the programs at CCSF was a huge part while applying to grad school, it helped me improve my curriculum, my GPA, and the teachers were very supportive while I was applying. I also got a scholarship because of my good grades while at CCSF, and because of that I could accept the spot in the program.
Thanks to the program I was able to start working at BABEC, since the executive director was my teacher [at CCSF] and she offers positions to students she considers to have good lab skills. [The program] was also a huge part of me being able to work at BioMarin, because of the stem cell certificate at CCSF - that helped me to get the job in manufacturing working with cell culture.
What advice would you offer to current and future students? What would you tell them to expect as a student of the Biotech program?
To get the most out of every class, to learn, to practice, students shouldn’t only take the class to pass. At CCSF you have the opportunity to improve yourself, to get better every day while working in the classes. That is a one-time opportunity, because the information is available to all of us everywhere, not only at school, but the opportunity to work in real labs, and develop experiments, and test yourself everyday to improve skills, while being mentored by amazing teachers. This is something that I am very grateful for.
