Statewide Biotech Trainers Train At VGCC Franklin County Campus
BioWork instructors from 15 community colleges participated in “Train-the-Trainer” sessions Aug. 21-22 at Vance-Granville Community College’s Franklin County Campus Biotechnology Center.
BioWork is a highly successful course that trains process technicians to work in North Carolina’s fast-growing biotechnology. Six community colleges currently offer the 128-hour training courses – Vance-Granville Community College, Wake Technical Community College, Durham Technical Community College, Johnston Community College, Central Carolina Community College and Piedmont Community College.
The other schools represented at the training sessions at the Franklin campus are planning to add BioWork training at their schools. They were Davidson County CC, Fayetteville Technical CC, Forsyth Technical CC, Haywood CC, Lenoir CC, Mitchell CC, Montgomery CC, Robeson CC, Southeastern CC, Wilkes CC and Wilson Technical CC.
Vance-Granville Community College was chosen to host the trainer training because its two-year-old Biotechnology Center at the satellite campus near Louisburg is state-of-the-art and includes some laboratory training equipment not found on any other campus. Among these is a bioprocess fermenting tank that simulates the manufacturing procedure and gives students hands-on practice.
The VGCC Biotechnology Center was developed with the assistance of Novozymes North America in Franklinton, the North Carolina Biotechnology Center and the North Carolina Community College System.
During the two-day training, experienced instructors like Susan and Larry Patterson of Wake Tech and Sean O’Neill of Johnston CC led the prospective trainers through classroom and laboratory instruction procedures and shared their expertise with them. The trainees participated in the exercises as BioWork students would in order to experience what their students would.
BioWork prepares persons to be entry-level bioprocess technicians for pharmaceutical, bioprocess and chemical manufacturing companies. It is recognized as one of the best bioprocess technician training curricula in the nation, and it was developed to increase the pool of potential employees in this rapidly-growing industry.
Currently, Vance-Granville Community College has five sessions of the BioWork training underway, all are filled, and there is a waiting list for future classes.
In the first photo above, Birchel Rice, left, and Bill Hardy from Wilkes Community College in Wilkesboro participate in a measurement exercise as part of the classroom training in the BioWork “Train-the-Trainer” program conducted Aug. 21-22 at Vance-Granville Community College’s Franklin County Campus Biotechnology Center.
In the second photo, Larry Patterson, left, of Wake Technical Community College, conducts an exercise on a pressure demonstration device as part of the laboratory training in the BioWork “Train-the-Trainer” program conducted Aug. 21-22. BioWork instructors from 15 community colleges across the state participated in the training at Vance-Granville Community College’s Franklin County Campus Biotechnology Center.
