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Interview
with Dana Martin
While earning her bachelor’s degree in biology, Dana worked as Lab Assistant throughout her four years of study, and also completed two years of internships. Of her early part-time work on campus, Dana says, “Even very basic work in a college lab will give you such an advantage. Washing dishes and making solutions can help get you ahead when you’re applying for jobs. If you show how responsible you are, employers will start giving you side projects. The opportunities are right there in front of you.” Dana continued her studies and applied
for an internship as a Research Associate (RA) at Sigma Chemical Corporation.
Because of her lab work on campus, Dana says, “It was my college
experience in the lab that allowed me to apply for the RA position. Without
the practical experience I already had, I couldn’t have landed such
a role.” While Dana’s career was off to a good start, she discovered that the traditional options of graduate school or medical school for career advancement did not appeal to her. “There’s a big misconception that you need graduate school or an advanced education to go into biotech. Although I attended graduate school for two years, that wasn’t fulfilling. I realized from my experience of enjoying my college internships that working in industry was what I wanted to do.” So Dana moved to Seattle and landed a job at Targeted Genetics as an entry level Research Assistant. She was promoted first to a Senior Assistant position and later to her current, more independent position as an Associate. Dana describes the difference saying, “As an Associate, you know more of what’s expected of you. You’re given a task and you develop the assay. You work independently and design your research experiments and come to your own conclusions.” Dana describes her initial experience of hiring and training an intern to work under her as intimidating, “The first time involved the biggest learning curve to supervise the new intern. But after that, I learned how to benefit from the experience. “Targeted Genetics’ procedure for hiring interns is effective. First you write up a proposal for the management team requesting an intern. Your proposal is reviewed to see how it’s going to benefit the company as a whole. “Once the request for an internship is approved, you start advertising at local colleges and on the company Web site. You receive resumes, review them, interview candidates, select someone, and hire them for a paid internship. We tend to focus on hiring interns in the summer, but sometimes we have positions during the school year. “We start out new interns with basic lab techniques to see if they’re comfortable in the lab environment and if they’re familiar with pipetting and such techniques. We start out slow, having them read some scientific papers about what the company does and how their work fits into the big picture. It’s really important to educate them in the larger scope of what the company is about and what the field is doing. “At that point, they’re usually ready to jump into their project. They start doing experiments or assays to support the defined project they’re working on. The last two interns developed. ELISAs (Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assays). They start by doing literature searches to find the right reagents, then bring them in house and begin the development of the assay with those reagents. Once you’ve developed the assay and tested all the parameters, you write your SOP (Standard Operating Procedure). In addition to the procedure, you also write a technical report describing all you’ve done to come up with the final assay. “Near the end of the project, our interns prepare and make a solo presentation in front the entire company. It’s a lot of work, but it’s an excellent education for interns. You’d be surprised how much some of the quiet interns shine in their presentations. “After their internships, those who have completed the program can apply for full time positions as Research Assistants or Quality Control Analysts. It’s all about timing, depending on whether something is available, and whether the person is a good match. “For companies to have successful internship programs, you must have projects designed for interns. Instead of assigning an intern to a project on a pathway to FDA approval, you can tailor a project around a defined start and end (like developing ELISAs). Such projects involve repetitiveness, which can be assigned to a beginning person. “It’s a good exercise for companies to hire interns. As an employer, we benefit because we learn what the next generation is about. The people in our lab learn from interns about the current course offerings students experience today. Ten years ago my college courses barely touched on some of today’s subjects (like recombinant DNA). The intern I’ve hired for this summer is taking Immunology, and he’s light years ahead of what I learned in school. “As an employer, you have to get beyond the idea that interns are going to mess something up. The risks are the same ones you’d experience with a full-time employee, yet with an intern you don’t have a big commitment. The benefits of internship programs outweigh the risks for us. Frankly, you don’t have to pay interns a lot because they’re just getting a foundation in the field, and you’re assigning them tasks that don’t require a lot of experience. “Much of the success of bringing in and managing interns depends on the supervisor in charge. He or she needs to be able to identify the right tasks to assign to a new person. If you recognize the benefits of internships, you can gain a tremendous amount from them. Also, it’s always good public relations because interns spread the word about where they performed their internship. We try to support the local biotech programs by hiring interns and graduates from those programs. It’s a way to give back to the Pacific Northwest biotech community. “Coming from a student’s point of view, I would say: ‘Get involved as much as you can as early as you can. Either volunteer or get a part time job. The earlier you get involved (even washing dishes), the farther you can go in the field.’” |
