CAREER PLANNING

 

The choice of appropriate career path is essential for a student in order that career planning and development strategies are implemented and proceed in timely fashion. Each Biology Major has an Academic Advisor throughout their four years as an undergraduate who is a member of the Biology Department faculty to assist with planning an academic program consistent with student abilities and interests and to monitor the student's progress towards established career goals. The Biology Department also works very closely with the Office of Career Planning and Placement to make sure Biology Majors make appropriate use of resources to assist with career decision making and career development activities. Most Biology Majors elect the courses CARP 211 and CARP 412, Career Planning I and II, which provide information, services, techniques and experiences related to all aspects of career planning and development.

Biology Department faculty and Office of Career Planning and Placement staff present workshops throughout the academic year dealing with many of the strategies and techniques required for successful career development, along with necessary preparation for application to postgraduate education or employment; upper-class Biology Majors who have taken advantage of these services also participate in the workshops to demonstrate the ways in which such services have been useful in their career development plans.

The Career Resource Center for Life Sciences and Pre-Health Professions, housed in the Office of Career Planning and Placement Office complex, contains print, videotape, CD-ROM and online sources of material providing information and a variety of resources about careers, professions, schools, programs, application procedures and employment opportunities.

The course requirements for the Biology major provide a breadth of exposure to the science sub- disciplines and serve as a foundation for more specialized courses available as electives to fulfill remaining degree requirements and to obtain the specific preparation needed for individual postgraduate plans. A strong complement of molecular biology in many of the major courses assures students a contemporary approach to life sciences and professional programs.

All employers, graduate and health professions schools require or expect that students applying for academic programs or employment have learning experiences outside typical academic coursework that provide exposure to "real world" environments and circumstances that build skills needed to function appropriately in a particular career track. Internships expose students to job or profession-related environments, and associated experiences and problems that require application of knowledge, methodologies, and experiences toward solutions, usually involving teams of individuals of various backgrounds applying their skills. Internships provide the means for students to determine whether the actual activities within a career track are consistent with goals and abilities. Members of admissions committees and prospective employers want to know that the student has had exposure to an actual work-related environment, has genuine interest and has demonstrated the characteristics and skills needed for satisfactory performance within the profession or career track. Individuals who can show that they have successfully completed internships have a distinct edge in the application process for professional or graduate schools, or for employment. Letter(s) of recommendation written by supervisors of student internships can mean the difference between acceptance and rejection; often, the choice for acceptance between equally academically qualified applicants will be made on the basis of quality and quantity of internship experiences.

King's Biology Majors have been successful in obtaining top-notch internships at major universities, medical centers, and in industry due to their excellent academic background and experience with laboratory techniques and technology. Many of these internship programs provide support for the student participants in the form of travel expenses, room and board and in some cases a stipend as well. These measures of support allow the student to take advantage of the learning experience without financial burden.

Kerry Lee spent a summer internship doing research at the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Maryland. Lee worked with microarray techniques as a means of analyzing gene activity in cancer cells. Kerry says, "The skills I learned at King's gave me the necessary background for my work during the internship. The internship gave me some 'real world' exposure and was invaluable for my preparation for graduate school and a career in research." Lee is currently completing studies for the PhD at Johns Hopkins University's Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine.

Mike Romanko completed a summer internship at Duquesne University as part of his preparation for graduate school and a career in genetic research. "It was obvious that he'd gotten good training from King's," says Dr. H. Bernard Hartman, Chair of the Biology Department at Duquesne. "Romanko ranks among the top students I've worked with. He's very self-motivated and appreciates 'the bigger picture', which is rare among students. We're hoping to get more applicants from King's who are of the same caliber as Mike." "In talking with my friends at other colleges and universities, I discovered that students at King's are exposed to high levels of technology at earlier stages in their educational development," says Romanko. Romanko completed the PhD program in Integrated Sciences/Molecular Medicine at Pennsylvania State University and Hershey Medical School, then served as a research fellow in neurobiology at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and received a National Institutes of Health fellowship in the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania where he worked to develop viral gene therapy vectors that target stem cells and brain cells to deliver corrective or protective genes to the nervous system to treat genetic defects and traumatic brain injury. Dr. Romanko is currently working with the stem cell group at Johnson and Johnson, Co. in Somerville, N.J.

Robert Moder completed two summer internships in preparation for his graduate school and career plans. The summer prior to his junior year at King's was spent at Stanford University Medical School in Palo Alto, California working in the laboratory of King's alumnus Dr. Paul Utz ('86), in the Division of Rheumatology. Moder's work involved the use of molecular biology techniques to determine how factors that control autoimmune disease might be regulated in order to provide better treatment. "Robert Moder did a superb job over the summer, functioning at the level of an upper-level graduate student. Nearly every technique he used in my lab was one that he had already learned as part of his King's education", said Dr.Utz. Moder's second internship, during the summer prior to his senior year at King's was at the University of Iowa, Department of Microbiology. Moder's work there utilized a model system of bacterial infection to study the immune response and clearance of intracellular pathogenic organisms by immune T cells. "The courses in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at King's not only prepared me for every type of technique that I needed to conduct the experiments during my internships, but also provided me with the academic background needed to fully understand the entire experimental approach used in the studies, which was most helpful," says Moder. Moder is currently in the PhD program in Molecular Biology at Princeton University.

In addition to the placements in prestigious graduate programs, King's graduates find they are also well qualified for positions in industry or medical research. Recent graduate Clarissa Dake is working at Vital Probes, Inc. as a Proteomics Lab Technician. Holly Micolochick is a researcher at Pharmasset, Inc. in Princeton, NJ where her work involves finding inhibitor drugs for HIV and other infections.

Another way that King's College Biology Majors gain important internship experiences is through the Study Abroad Program, administered by Mrs. Mollie Farmer. Over the past several years, King's Biology Majors have studied at outstanding foreign institutions and locations and have derived not only the academic, but the cultural benefits of the internships as well. Mary Blair Long, currently a student at Pennsylvania College of Optometry, spent a summer in Sydney, Australia, in the Emergency Room at the Prince of Wales Hospital. Erin Koscinski and Jamey Hourigan, both currently in medical school, spent summer internships at the Diabetes Transplant Unit, Prince of Wales Hospital, in Sydney Australia. Keralee Colwell, currently employed by Tepnel Life Codes as a Lab Assistant and Ryan Gaffney, currently in medical school, each completed an internship at universities in Ireland. Each also completed coursework at universities while in Ireland and transferred the credits from those courses to King's as part of their department and graduation requirement. These and other similar internships, along with the research opportunities within the Biology Department, and the strong curriculum in science and the liberal arts provide King's Biology Majors with the academic preparation and experience needed to obtain desired postgraduate educational and/or employment opportunities.