Biotech Career Profiles

Diana Brandner

Instructional Assistant II
Biotechnology Laboratory Technician Program
Madison Area Technical College
Madison, WI

 


Each morning when I unlock the doors to the teaching labs, I can never fully anticipate what opportunities or challenges I will face that day. I am an Instructional Assistant, a blend of teacher and laboratory technician, in the Biotechnology Laboratory Technician Program at Madison Area Technical College (MATC). I am a member of a team that trains students to be technicians in the biotechnology industry. Students who enter our program are very diverse, but they all share an interest in biology and chemistry and a desire to use the knowledge and skills they obtain to help others.

The Biotechnology Lab Tech program is a two-year, associate degree program. Biotech students gain hands-on laboratory-based technical skills in the areas of cell culture, fermentation, media and reagent preparation, safety, chromatography, molecular biology, protein purification, and instrumentation. Our graduates work at laboratories in universities, pharmaceutical companies, food-processing companies, molecular biology companies, agriculture research companies, and product analysis companies. Similar biotechnology programs exist in many areas of the United States.

My background is in biology, chemistry, and secondary science education. Before working at MATC, I worked as a technician for a medical research foundation, in a university research laboratory, for an agricultural biotechnology company, and as a high school teacher.

Work as an Instructional Assistant varies from day to day. My work includes: preparation of lab reagents and media, setting up labs for students, pre-running educational labs, developing and writing educational labs to keep up with current technology, demonstrating lab methods and techniques for students, keeping chemical, equipment, and MSDS inventories, supervising student lab workers, scheduling and supervising open lab times for students, tutoring students, repairing and calibrating equipment, and coordinating all of my activities with the other members of the program team.

Usually when I unlock the teaching labs each morning, there are usually one or two students waiting in the hallway anxious to get into the lab to begin working on their experiments from the previous day or to check on their lab results. With the wide variety of things I do each day, my job is never dull, but it is the students who really make this job challenging, exciting and fun.