“I had a friend who passed away in 2008 from cancer, and I thought, ‘He didn’t have an opportunity, and I’m wasting mine,’” Neill said. “That’s what made me decide to go back to school.”
Neill began taking classes at the Austin Community College Round Rock campus in 2013 and landed in the school’s biotechnology program, she said.
“It was one of the classes offered at the campus closest to me,” Neill said. “I was looking at different things. … Biotech just seemed like the right fit for me. So that’s what I went into, and it’s been great.”
While studying at ACC, Neill was able to earn an internship in January 2013 at the Texas Life-sciences Collaboration Center, a biotech company accelerator in Georgetown—through the center’s partnership that was established in 2011 with the community college.
“It’s been life-changing for me,” Neill said. “I had already worked in a lab in a classroom environment. … [The internship] gave me a lot of confidence.”
After completing her internship with Molecular Templates—a member company at TLCC—Neill was offered an hourly position at the company that was re-evaluated after 90 days and eventually turned into a full-time job, she said.
She is one of several working at the center who earned a certificate or degree in biotechnology from ACC, interned with a TLCC member company and found full-time employment in Georgetown.
Through the partnership 12 ACC students have interned at TLCC companies, and eight have been hired by those companies, ACC spokeswoman Jessica Vess said.
In February, ACC announced a $4.9 million grant from the state’s Emerging Technology Fund that will help develop wet lab and teaching space at TLCC as well as an 8,400-square-foot biotech wet lab at the ACC Highland campus.
Linnea Fletcher, chairwoman of ACC’s biotech department, said the grant will help expand the existing partnership between ACC and TLCC to provide additional internship opportunities for students at TLCC member companies.
ACC President/CEO Richard Rhodes said having more students educated through the ACC biotech program and TLCC partnership could help attract new businesses to Central Texas because there will be a trained and skilled workforce.
“To have students already there in the community and to have jobs there, that’s what a community college is all about,” he said. “It’s making sure we provide the pathways to employment and to meet the needs of business and industry.”
Grant award
Through the grant, training opportunities will be available in Georgetown, TLCC Executive Director Michael Douglas said.
“This award recognizes our growing collaboration with ACC to ensure that we have the training resources to meet the growing workforce demands of the life science industry,” Douglas said.
The grant will be broken down to several phases, the first of which will be used to fund classroom and wet lab space in the second building under construction at the TLCC campus, located at 111 Cooperative Way.
TLCC will receive nearly $800,000, Douglas said. About half is for personnel and space. The other half will pay for equipment and supplies, he said.
“This grant will fund training space in the form of a classroom with desks, chairs, and computers, and it provides a laboratory space that is extremely well-equipped for training these students,” Douglas said.
Douglas said the space would also be accessible to the center’s member companies.
“Providing companies these common instruments I think helps put them over the edge,” ACC biotech instructor Sulatha Dwarakanath said.
The grant also supports the development of a Good Manufacturing Practices–certified building, meaning the Food and Drug Administration could approve the building’s use for pharmaceutical manufacturing. Member companies moving forward with manufacturing and commercialization of their products, including DisperSol Technologies, Molecular Templates and DiFusion Technologies, could use the space, according to the grant summary.
Douglas said the grant would help further consulting opportunities for ACC faculty as well.
“The [contract consulting] program that we are initiating with ACC and TLCC basically allows [part-time] faculty … who want to form relationships with our companies here to do that,” he said.
Faculty would be able to consult with TLCC companies and possibly oversee former students with certifications working as interns, Douglas said.
Regional impact
Douglas said the grant would have a regional impact on the biotech industry in Central Texas.
“We’re seeing [entities in] Travis and Williamson counties really collaborating together to build this infrastructure.” he said.
The opening date for the wet lab at the Highland campus has not been set, Fletcher said. Once open, 2,000-square-foot will be available to private companies.
“We need to do this because a lot of start-up companies need this help,” she said.
The lack of wet labs forced many companies that developed technologies in Georgetown and Austin to travel elsewhere to manufacture their product, Fletcher said. Making such space available to companies helped convince the state to provide support, she said.
According to the grant, building GMP-certified facilities “will address this demand and enable enhanced recruitment of companies currently located elsewhere.”
ACC is working with multiple partners, including UT’s Austin Technology Incubator.
Additional reporting by Joe Lanane
