Formula for Success

For now, the experiments are simple.

In a Moorpark College classroom, students line up with vials of plasma DNA, holding them out to an instructor who adds drops of an enzyme mix. One by one, the students carry the vials to a water bath, intent on warming the enzyme so it will split the plasma.

The goal is to fuse two plasmas and create a new bacterium that has drug-resistant qualities from both strains.

This introductory biology course is as close as students will get this school year to learning about biotechnology, a field that melds biology and technology to form anything from oil-spill-eating bacteria to blood-clotting drugs.

But come fall, students will be able to take part in a full-fledged biotechnology program at the Moorpark campus, one of fewer than two dozen such programs offered statewide through the community college system.

“Nature has created some wonderful, marvelous molecules,” said Marie Panec, a Moorpark College microbiology instructor who helped create the program. “And what we are discovering is that the molecules are out there for our use.”

Business experts say the demand for such community college programs is growing locally, especially with biotechnology giant Amgen in Thousand Oaks acting as a magnet for smaller biotechnology firms.

In fact, a biotechnology corridor has sprung up along the Ventura Freeway, from Santa Barbara through Ventura County and into the San Fernando Valley.

The Moorpark program, the second offered through the Ventura County Community College system, is designed to help students enter any aspect of the rapidly growing biotechnology industry.

“These businesses have needs for people who have some type of expertise at all levels, and that’s kind of a natural market for community colleges to get into,” said Charles Maxey, dean of Cal Lutheran University’s school of business.

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The community college system’s first biotechnology program was created in 1993 at Ventura College. That campus teamed with Amgen to launch a program specializing in the plant or agricultural fields.

Since then, the program has attracted plenty of people wanting to earn an associate’s degree in science. But it also has drawn those who have already earned a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology or who are working in the biotechnology industry, said Bob Renger, the school’s dean of sciences.

With a $105,000 matching grant from the National Science Foundation, Moorpark College has taken the next step and teamed with representatives from Newbury Park’s Baxter Healthcare Corp. The company is known for producing Recombinate--a protein, missing in hemophiliacs, to help clot blood.

“They have good staff working on it and it will be a very good program,” said Renger, who is among the biotechnology experts consulted by Moorpark College. “I think it will provide students with more choices.”

Students taking the program, said Panec, will come out with a broad biotechnology education that may lead to jobs in a number of fields, including agriculture and medicine.

The school anticipates that students who complete the course will be able to snag some of the entry-level positions, and those with more job experience or who pursue higher degrees will be able to find some mid- or high-level positions.

While the program committee is still hammering out details of the second part of the course--when the instructor will conduct lessons and laboratories at Baxter--more than 40 students have already expressed interest in the program.

Initially, it is expected to have room for about 20.

The campus will likely select students based on the number of prerequisite courses they have completed, including introductory biology, two semesters of chemistry and one semester of statistics.

In the end, Baxter representatives say they hope the programs will create greater interest in the field and provide a larger pool of local employment applicants.

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“A lot of times you have to recruit and not from the local area,” said Ernie Bognar, who oversees Baxter’s manufacturing operations and also helped create the school’s program.

“So there isn’t a large population of qualified people for this industry, and usually those qualified come from a competitor,” he said. “Working with Moorpark [College] will provide more qualified people to the area.”