Daniel S. Levine
Published: July 12, 2004

As local community colleges train future workers for the biotechnology
industry, BayBio wants to make sure they provide the skills the industry
needs.

The South San Francisco-based biotechnology industry association is
establishing a workforce committee that will include officials of two-
and four-year colleges as well as industry representatives to develop a
long-term strategic approach to address a range of concerns.

"We are dealing with literally thousands of jobs being opened and not
enough locally trained talent to fill them. We are hoping to help the
state identify those fields for which there is good curriculum, but not
enough of a training pipeline," said Matt Gardner, president of BayBio.
"A couple of the community college programs are a perfect example where
they are putting out 20 graduates a year and they could be putting out
10 times that if they had the infrastructure and human resources."

The industry-led push comes in the face of several efforts in the Bay
Area to expand programs for training a workers for the growing industry.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Labor awarded a $2 million grant to
the Alameda Workforce Investment Board in collaboration with the San
Mateo Workforce Investment Board to expand and refine a pilot program in
San Mateo County that trains entry-level biotech manufacturing
technicians. The project will prepare 150 entry-level workers and will
retrain 40 dislocated engineers from the airline, aerospace, and IT
sectors for positions in facilities management, quality control and
project engineering.

The grant is part of a $17.2 million national effort developed under the
Bush administration's High Growth Job Training Initiative to address
workforce challenges facing the industry. In addition to the two
workforce investment boards, key partners in the project include
Genentech, Alza, Baxter, Chiron, Abgenix, Skyline Community College,
Ohlone Community College, Opportunities Industrialization Center West,
Adecco and Gruber and Pereira Associates.

There is other activity as well. California State University, Hayward
has been pushing for state designation as the East Bay Biotechnology
Center to provide training for workers with technical skills needed by
biotechnology from lab to production workers. And separately, Foster
City-based Gilead Sciences has pledged up to $500,000 to the
Biotechnology Institute, a national educational organization, to develop
a partnership between community colleges and the industry. The program
will be piloted this year in Northern and Southern California.

BayBio's Gardner believes the new workforce committee can help educators
ensure programs are on target.

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