Biotech Partners Seen as Model for Regional Efforts on Workforce Development
1/12/2009 7:53:19 PM
Biotech Partners, launched by Bayer in 1992 in collaboration with the City of Berkeley, was held up as a model for schools and cities statewide to recruit qualified applicants for the booming biotech industry in a regional work session. “Maintaining a Viable East Bay Economy: Aligning Educational Systems, Needs and Expectations” convened in September 2008 by the East Bay Economic Development Alliance and brought together roughly 100 business leaders, elected officials and educational experts to focus on filling innovative local industries’ increasingly critical need for a qualified workforce.
Alameda County is working to get kindergartners excited about science and continue the hands-on curriculum through high school. Community colleges and state universities are raising money and launching career pathway academies along with apprenticeships and industry collaborations. They are looking to Biotech Partners as one of the oldest and most successful workforce development programs in the emerging technologies that will fuel California’s future.
“They’re some of our most job-ready, dedicated employees,” notes Peter Kramer, Director of Manufacturing Sciences, who serves on the Biotech Partners Board of Directors. “Bayer can be proud of its seminal role in this effective program—and of our many volunteers who as supervisors and mentors, career advisors and judges, have helped make it such a successful model.”
