Program aims for jobs in growing industry

She enrolled in Laney College's pilot program in Medical Device Engineering, which started in May 2011. Unemployed since August 2010, Verma had a job even before she completed the four-month program.

The goal of the pilot program, funded by the Alameda County Workforce Investment Board (ACWIB), was to provide training for the unemployed in skills they needed to get their foot in the door of this thriving but little-known industry. Laney partnered with UC Berkeley's Biomolecular Nanotechnology Center to provide the hands-on lab training.

It's the first program of its kind in the Bay Area, and the first step toward building a year-long permanent program at Laney. "This program, there's nothing like it," said Peter Crabtree, dean of the Instruction for the Vocational Technology Division.

Although the Bay Area has lost nearly 20,000 manufacturing jobs in the last 10 years, the medical device industry has been growing. As the field of medicine advances, more and more complex devices are needed, from highly specialized artificial limbs to machines that are used in laser eye surgery to microfluidic "labs on a chip" that are shrunken versions of laboratory machinery.

Said Crabtree, "It's kind of an invisible industry, and secretive," often because the companies are working on proprietary products and processes.

However, several local companies provided consultation when it came time to design the program, including local companies Bio-Rad and Abbot Laboratories. Crabtree noted that tours of their labs required signing non-disclosure agreements.

Naima Azgui, the program's lead faculty, wanted to design a course of study that provided students with the knowledge and experience this diverse industry demands. "My goal is to help people get a good job, not just any job," she said. That meant classes in rapid prototyping, electronics, engineering and computer software.

It's an intensive course load, but most of the 18 students that started the program stayed with it and enjoyed the challenge. One student, Joyce Bush, said, "They took me where I thought I'd never go—and it was good. They taught me skills, transferable skills in the job market. It was a lot of hard work, but well worth it."

Besides mastering the fundamental theoretical knowledge, students also had to learn lab techniques, from the basics of pipetting and clean room procedures to more challenging skills such as soft lithography (creating polymers based on silicon templates) and fluid circuitry (creating electronic circuits with fluids instead of silicon).

There were other challenges for students. Because they were for the most part unemployed or underemployed, they often faced financial crisis. There were times when some students didn't have enough money to pay for transportation to class.

Their efforts seem to be paying off, though. The program ended in early September and, a month later, nine of the 16 graduates have jobs in the field.

This remarkable success may be due to the diverse experience students entered the program with. They ranged in age from their early 20s to mid-50s and had educational backgrounds in biology, mechanical engineering and nursing. "We came from all directions," said Verma. Her own background is in chemistry.

 The program also included a few people from NUMMI, the GM-Toyota automobile manufacturing plant in Fremont that closed in April, 2010. Those students had years of experience on the assembly line, but not much science training. Yet they had other skills they could draw on.

Paul Lum, director of the UC Berkeley Bioengineering Nanotechnology Center, said: "They got skills. These big ruddy guys, they can do these things. A welder now can handle a pipette. This guy, he can put a welding bead on a small surface area. Very skilled individuals, and very smart."

The students became a close-knit group and tutored each other through the tough parts. Verma explained, "There was one gentleman who had experience working with circuit boards, so (for) people who were struggling with how a circuit board worked, he came forward. The people who were struggling with math, people who had a strong feeling for math, they came forward."