Biotechnology
2018-2019 Program Review

American River College offers the only Biotechnology program in the Sacramento Area. Both an A.S. degree and Biotechnology Certificate are offered to serves different populations. Some students will transfer to university programs and some will enter directly into the job market in the region. The program provides an in depth focus on Cell and Molecular Biology concepts and laboratory skills that are not represented in other Biology courses. This information allows students to better compete when transferring to universities and/or in the job market. In addition, these laboratory and data analysis skills are applicable to many fields, both within and outside the biotechnology industry. The Biotechnology program provides an understanding of Biotechnology industry, including its impact on society and health, company organization, biomedical product development, quality assurance, etc. Emphasis is also placed on teaching critical thinking and communication skills necessary for success in the workforce. While laboratory courses are taught in person, other courses such as Introduction to Bioinformatics, are offered online to increase access. We also have articulation agreements with local high schools for several courses. Courses offered include: BIOT 301 – Biotechnology and Human Health BIOT 305 – Introduction to Bioinformatics BIOT 307 – Biotechnology and Society BIOT 311 – Biotechnology Laboratory Methods – Molecular Techniques BIOT 312 – Biotechnology Laboratory Methods – Microbial and Cell Culture Techniques BIOT 498 – Work Experience in Biotechnology

The Biotechnology Program contributes to the achievement of the mission of American River College in many ways: Access – The program broadens access to cell and molecular laboratory techniques that are increasingly critical in many fields of biology, biotechnology, and medicine. Benefits of education – As students learn their way around the biotech laboratory and industry, we strive to instill critical thinking and analysis skills, as well as the ability to communicate with others. Through directed research projects, students develop skills to teach themselves and become lifelong learners. Communication – Class projects and assignments help to develop the ability to communicate with others in a variety of modalities, including written and oral presentations. Community Development – Our program strives to encourage community development and engagement through partnerships and collaborations with other institutions in the area including UC Davis and CSU Sacramento. We also promote interdisciplinary collaborations such as working with artists on Bio-art projects. Diversity – Many STEM fields, including biotechnology, have unequal representations of some segments of the population. In order to help shift this to more equitable access, we strive to provide an inclusive and welcoming environment that increases access to cell and molecular biology topics and opportunities to develop laboratory skills for underrepresented populations in STEM fields. Employees – The program provides opportunities to learn more about biotechnology to faculty and staff on campus through seminar presentations and workshops. Excellence – Students determine whether Biotechnology is a good fit for them and their goals and if so, completion of this program helps them develop the persistence and skills necessary to succeed and achieve their goals. Innovation and Risk Taking – The Biotechnology program is innovative by engaging in outside projects and collaborations (such as our Biohack the Planet grant project and SIRIUS project in association with Sacramento State) and developing new cell and molecular biology lab activities for use in our biotech classroom, as well as to share with other courses within the Biology program and others in the community, including other biotechnology programs, high schools, and the biohacker community. Leadership – By sponsoring the Biotech Club and other outreach efforts that support positive contributions to the community, the program promotes the development of student leadership. Student Learning Outcomes – We track and ensure that SLOs meet the demands and expectations of the biotechnology job market through engagement with representative from industry as part of the Biotechnology Advisory Committee. Technology – Technology is an important part of Biotechnology. Imparting computer skills necessary for bioinformatics and other data analysis is a key part of our program. Additionally, students engage with cutting edge laboratory technology through our lab facilities. When we do not have the resources needed for newer technologies (e.g. Next Gen DNA sequencing methods), other modalities such as field trips and activities are used to introduce students to key concepts and methods.

The Biotechnology program has gone through several significant changes since the last program review that need to be taken into account when examining progress on past objectives. First, the closing of the North Valley Biotechnology Center (NVBC) in 2014 led to a large reduction in resources and personnel that has had dramatic impacts on the program, particularly with regard to internship opportunities, outreach, and course development. Second, following the closure of NVBC, Ken Kubo temporarily took an interim Dean role, which diverted much of his attention away from program objectives. During this period, Janet Hanstad ran the program as a long term temporary faculty until Dr. Kubo returned. In 2018, Dr. Kubo resigned and Adam Telleen took over the position coordinating the program. This period of changing and temporary leadership may have stifled progress toward our objectives, which along with the loss of outreach and support from NVBC meant that our program has suffered during this past review cycle. Despite these challenges, we have made some progress toward achieving our unit's objectives. Previous recommendations from the last program review will be addressed one at a time below: 1. Emphasize BIOT 301, a core biotechnology lecture course, for student learning outcomes assessment and continuous improvement to increase student success rates BIOT 301 SLOs were assessed, reviewed, and found to be acceptable. Student success rates for BIOT 301 have increased somewhat from 2014-2018, ranging from 65.2% in 2014-2015 academic year to a high of 80% in 2017-2018. Although this is down slightly for 2018-2019 (72.2%), it still easily meets Department Set Standards. This appears to have been successfully addressed, though we will continue to monitor student success rates as this is an important core course for our program. BIOT 301 has also been used as a vehicle introduce new topics into the program (e.g. Next Generation DNA Sequencing by request of the Advisory Committee) in a lecture only course that does not require additional lab resources to implement. This course is also a useful vehicle for both student and faculty recruitment. BIOT 301 has some prerequisites, but is still accessible enough that students can check out what Biotechnology has to offer with minimal commitment, potentially drawing more students into the program. 2. Collaborate with other ARC campus programs to recruit students from underrepresented populations into the Biotechnology program and improve student success rates for current underrepresented groups in the program. Given that several important groups are still underrepresented in our program, the goals have not been achieved. This goal is still definitely a priority. However, small sample sizes since the closing of NVBC make this difficult to evaluate quantitatively. The relatively small number of students in BIOT courses means that normal variance can look like huge swings in representation. Despite this difficulty in assessment, it is still clear that we are in need of improvement in outreach and recruitment of underrepresented groups. 3. Develop student tracking methods to evaluate success of ARC Biotechnology students after completing the program. The Chancellor's office now tracks student data after completion across all programs, so this is no longer necessary since it has already been addressed. 4. Incorporate a new research methods course into the Biotechnology program to provide additional knowledge and skills to help students be more successful after completing the program. In particular, this recommendation would require additional financial resources and, possibly, laboratory space to implement. This new course (BIOT 499) has been initiated in curriculum as a draft by Heather Brown, who departed from the program a short time later when the North Valley Biotechnology Center closed its doors on the ARC campus in 2014. Since then scarcity of personnel, time, and resources in our program has meant that many aspects, including continued development of BIOT 499, has been slow or non-existent. 5. (from last Biology Program Review) Better integrate Biotechnology into Biology Program and courses. This has not gotten as much attention, but some progress has been made. There was collaboration with other Biology faculty to develop some Drosophila-based labs for use in other courses, such as BIOL 400. We are currently discussing the addition of biotechnology-related lab activities to microbiology courses.

Strengths of the program include a long history of serving the community and collaborating with other institutions in the region (e.g. universities and high schools), new leadership with fresh energy and perspective to lead to the program into the future, and innovativeness and adaptability to respond to the current education climate and student needs. The Biotechnology Program has collaborations with other institutions and communities in the area (UCD, CSUS, Biohacker community, high schools). These collaborations help students transition to and from these institutions due to connections with faculty and programs at UCD and CSUS. This also facilitates access to field trips, internship placements, and undergraduate research opportunities. The Biotechnology Program also provides beyond the classroom experience for students – with research projects such as GFP mutagenesis, Biohack the Planet grant project to develop new laboratory teaching tools, and Biotech club. There is also currently a grant application in collaboration with UC Davis and CSU Sacramento being reviewed. If funded, the Institutional Research and Career Development Award (IRACDA) program aims to train future biomedical faculty to be outstanding in both research and teaching in order to increase diversity of undergraduates entering science careers. IRACDA will specifically address 2 critical issues facing the future biomedical work force: 1) lack of formal preparation and experience in education and mentorship in traditional postdoctoral programs, and 2) need to enrich the curriculum at education-intensive undergraduate institutions with cutting-edge research topics and laboratory experiences. There are several key areas that need improvement: Diversity Data indicates that our program is falling short with lower enrollments (and success rates) for specific groups: African-American and Hispanic/Latinx students. However, the significance is hard to determine due to small sample sizes since our enrollment is low enough that percentages can shift dramatically from semester to semester due to small differences of only 1 or 2 students. Despite this challenge, it is clear that we need to work to address this disparity since these numbers broadly mirror the trends seen for the Biology Department as a whole, which has a much larger student population to draw the data from. Low Enrollment Enrollment in our program has declined precipitously since the demise of the North Valley Biotechnology Center (NVBC) on campus in 2014. NVBC sponsored and organized outreach efforts and had a significant influence on bringing students into our program. Without the NVBC providing this support, outreach and advertising efforts now fall solely on the Biotechnology program faculty. This has several negative impacts. First, without dedicated outreach staff, the faculty efforts in our program become stretched very thin across many fronts. Since the only full-time faculty in the Biotechnology program has to teach a full course load each semester, there is little time to dedicate to effective outreach efforts. Second, the NVBC also facilitated many interactions with other institutions in the area, in particular high schools, that led both to greater community impact, but also helped recruit students into the program. The loss of NVBC and corresponding outreach efforts has been a huge negative for our program and explains much of our decreased enrollments and most likely also contributes to our diversity gaps. Student Success Student success has met the Department Set Standards, but seems to vary from course to course within the program. Although the course with the lowest success (BIOT 305 – Introduction to Bioninformatics) only has a success rate of 58.6% for the 2017-2018 academic year, this is still consistent with past years. BIOT 305 is an online only course that focuses on computer sequence analysis, which is typically one of the most difficult biotechnology topics for students. Although the computer-based subject matter appears ideal for an online course, the lack of enforced face-to-face interaction with the instructor may contribute to reduced student success compared to other BIOT courses. This course is also not required for our A.S. degree or Certificate, so the lower success rate does not necessarily pose a problem. Other courses have reasonably high success rates (>70%), while the capstone laboratory courses BIOT 311 and BIOT 312 have success rates over 80%, suggesting that even when students struggle through early courses, those that make it to the capstone courses generally succeed. Job and Internship Placement Students often report frustration finding internship and job opportunities in Biotechnology, thus job and internship placement for our students is something that could still be improved. We hope to work more effectively with the Cooperative Work Experience Education and Internship Program on campus, as well as our Industry partners, to provide additional opportunities for students. Better Integration of Biotechnology into Biology Program Although some work has been done, this is another area that we would like to push moving forward. Several efforts are already underway, including a collaboration with Biology faculty to develop fruit fly labs, preliminary discussion to bring biotechnology labs to microbiology courses, and development of new lab materials supported by outside grant funding.

A large impact on the Biotechnology Program over the past several years has be the loss of North Valley Biotechnology Center (NVBC). NVBC helped with outreach efforts, student recruitment, and job placement. When they closed, our enrollment numbers dropped significantly. We need to increase outreach efforts to compensate and bring more students into the program. Clearly student recruitment needs to play an important role in the program going forward. This is a potential problem given that outreach and recruitment are not the primary job duties of any full-time faculty so energy will need to be diverted from other aspects of the program to adequately compensate for the loss of NVBC. This could be at least partially alleviated if the college/division could provide release time to address these issues as they are too big to be tackled without direct attention away from teaching and other faculty duties. This is borne-out by the clear decrease in enrollments and the resignation of the long-time biotechnology faculty coordinator partially due to the increased workload directly resulting from the loss of NVBC support. Engagement with Industry is important to provide opportunities for our students such as internship placement, employment, and to be able to update curriculum based on employer needs. We need to improve engagement with Industry. This is another area where the loss of NVBC hit the program hard and additional effort is needed to compensate. Together with the recruitment and outreach issues, this suggests that we need faculty/staff whose primary role is to facilitate these aspects of the program. Currently, the only full-time faculty is expected to teach a full load of courses in addition to coordinating outreach, recruitment, Industry engagement, and all other program activities. This expectation played a large role in the resignation of previous Biotechnology faculty and could do so again in the future if not addressed. Providing some FTE to Biotechnology faculty for coordination efforts could have a significant impact by allowing scarce resources and energy to be diverted to address these challenges left in the wake of NVBC's demise. Unfortunately, this cannot be tackled at the program level alone and will require working with the Science and Engineering Division to provide additional resources. If the status quo remains in place, there will likely be difficulties addressing these issues as well as significantly lowered morale of faculty within the program that could lead to further faculty attrition. The Biotechnology Program needs to update equipment and curriculum to reflect the job market and student goals, as well as modify course content to address the needs of industry. Some of our equipment and curriculum are out of date. Efforts to address this are ongoing, particularly in terms of curriculum and course content. However, there are several critical needs for equipment, including an updated gel imaging system (which could also be used by other courses in the Biology department) and biological safety cabinets so that we can train students using equipment that better reflects industry expectations. Another important issue that our program faces is the changing reality of the Biotechnology Industry. When our program began, there was strong demand from employers for our students. Today, there is a glut of graduates with B.A. and B.S. degrees in the job market. Most biotechnology and biomedical companies prefer to hire graduates with Bachelor's degrees over students without. Evidence for this comes from discussions with Industry representatives and also students currently or recently in the job market. Even many graduates with Bachelor's degrees have trouble finding employment in the field without additional internship and work experience. This means that our students who do not go on to transfer are at a significant disadvantage in the job market, and we may be doing them a disservice by stating that our A.S. degree or Biotechnology Certificate are sufficient for even entry-level jobs in biotechnology. This is especially problematic given that most of our funding comes from Career Technical Education sources (e.g. Perkins grant) that are tied to preparing students directly to compete in the job market. However, over 60% of our students transfer to 4 year institutions, so this may not be as problematic as it seems at first glance. According to California Life Sciences Association (CLSA) 2019 Industry Report, California leads the nation in growth of life science, biomedical, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology jobs. While not as prolific as the Bay Area and Los Angeles region, the greater Sacramento area employs nearly 11,000 people in Life Sciences related jobs and has the third highest Average Annual Wage for any area in the state including other areas with larger employment bases in Life Sciences. An important piece of future actions will include a closer look at that types of positions and training that biotechnology employers in the greater Sacramento area are looking for when hiring in order to better align our curriculum to employers' needs. This will be addressed based on recommendations from the Biotech Advisory Committee and discussions with representatives from Industry and other California biotechnology and related academic programs. Further integration of biotechnology concepts and materials into Biology courses would potentially improve student recruitment and visibility of the program as well as helping to ensure Biology courses are as current as possible with respect to biotechnology.

The Biotechnology Program strives to create a vibrant and diverse community that engages in collaborative projects, including research, bio-art, bioengineering, and synthetic biology, with the campus community as well as other institutions in the region to train students for careers in Biotechnology, Life Sciences, and Biomedical fields. By developing Open Source teaching labs and course materials that illustrate key concepts in biotech, the information can be shared with faculty at other institutions (including high schools and other community colleges) to help students with some of the challenging foundational ideas that underpin modern biotechnology. We need up to date equipment/facilities to reflect industry standards (e.g. new lab facilities with Biosafety cabinets and other equipment that would be found in industry and research laboratories, hot and deionized water, gas and vacuum outlets, etc.). The curriculum will be modified and updated based on recent advances in the field and Advisory Committee comments to better represent topics that will help students succeed in their goals (e.g. marketable job skills, transfer to university).

1. The Biotechnology Program will work to increase enrollment and diversity with more outreach. Achievement of this goal will be measured by increases in enrollment in all BIOT courses. Better outreach will also be used to bring in underrepresented student populations which can be measured by increases in enrollment and success of underrepresented groups. This may require collecting data from students in BIOT courses about how they learned about the program to get information on the best ways to maximize effectiveness of outreach efforts. Effective outreach is especially critical because our Biotechnology faculty only have limited time and resources for such efforts above and beyond our normal job duties. Additional resources devoted to outreach and coordination (e.g. faculty FTE dedicated to these activities) may be essential if this goal is to be achieved. 2. By providing seminars, workshops, and Biotech club events, our program will be more visible which could lead to increases in interest and enrollment. Success will be measured by attendance at such events and increases in both information requests and enrollment in BIOT courses. However, given how thinly stretched our faculty are, finding time to devote to planning and organizing these activities may require additional resources, though we have had some progress already with field trips for BIOT students and Biotech club members to a symposium at the UC Davis Genome Center and tour of USDA lab facilities, as well as engagement with the Biohacker community, which also shares the overarching goals of social justice, equity, and access for all to biotechnology. 3. The program will develop new labs and activities that can be used in our BIOT courses and/or integrated into other biology courses (e.g. BIOL 400, 440) to better teach the cutting edge knowledge and skills that are desirable for employers. Discussions are already underway to adapt biotechnology lab techniques for use in the General Microbiology course. We also have an ongoing project supported by a grant from the Biohack the Planet Conference to develop teaching lab materials. Efforts may also include continued development of the Biotechnology Research Methods course that had been initiated several years ago but abandoned due to time constraints of faculty and other priorities. Success will be measured directly by adoption of newly developed labs/activities in BIOL courses and indirectly by increases interest/enrollment in BIOT courses. 4. We will continue to teach skills that are relevant to employers based on discussion with Industry representatives and through recommendations of the Biotech Advisory Committee. Success will be measured by increases in internship placements at biotechnology-related companies, employment rate of program graduates in biotechnology-related jobs, and feedback from Industry partners. 5. Students often report frustration finding internship and job opportunities in Biotechnology. To improve the ARC Biotechnology program and increase job placement rates, new internship opportunities need to be developed. We hope to work more effectively with the ARC Cooperative Work Experience Education and Internship Program on campus, as well as our Industry partners, to provide additional opportunities for students. Success will be measured by increases in BIOT 498 enrollments and improved job placement statistics. 6. Our program is in desperate need of updated equipment. The most critical are 1) Gel Doc system for imaging agarose and polyacrylamide gels that actually reflects what students will encounter in industry and research laboratories and 2) Biological Safety Cabinets (BSCs) since their proper use is an important skill for many employers that we cannot currently train students for as we simply do not have access. BSCs would also allow us to include cutting edge techniques and materials that we currently do not have the facilities for (e.g. animal cell culture). Success will be measured by the acquisition of updated equipment.

The Biotechnology Program will work to increase outreach to underrepresented populations and improve representation and success of these populations, supporting ARC's commitment to social justice and equity. The Biotechnology program provides essential skills and training so students can enter directly into the workforce or successfully transfer to a four year institution. We provide access to these skills and training to everyone regardless of background, in particular to groups that have historically had limited opportunities to engage with biotechnology. We will continue looking for ways to improve out outreach efforts to better reach student demographics that are currently under served by our program.