The College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Development Institute have partnered with RI Bio, Skills for Rhode Island’s Future and the State Department of Labor and Training to create a program called “Biotech Boot Camp.”
They are hosting a two-week program for 15 interested Rhode Island residents to come to Avedisian Hall on campus. This program uses hands-on biotechnology to help biopharmaceutical firms look for potential employees.
Paul Larrat, the dean of the College of Pharmacy and Jennifer Lewis, the director of PDI, described the bootcamp as an intensive training session. The 15 selected residents get to experience this intense, fast-paced environment.
“It’s a mechanism in which we’re trying to develop the workforce in the state,” Lewis said.
This training will prepare these residents for a work environment and give them a peek into what it is going to be like for them when they eventually go into the workforce.
“Imparting some of the skills and the knowledge that individuals need in order to work in the pharmaceutical industry,” Lewis said.
According to Lewis, the residents have to be patient centric. Essentially, this bootcamp is here to prepare these residents for the real world of working for pharmaceutical companies.
“Something like this hits many boxes, hits many points of the URI mission,” Larrat added.
The University’s mission is to build upon their success and continue to provide knowledge, which is also part of the mission of this bootcamp. The idea of this bootcamp was created in partnership.
“We’re working with a co-department, so we’re College of Pharmacy, we’re in the biological sciences department, we’re partnering with molecular and cell biology as well,” Lewis said.
There are many partners that make this bootcamp work. These partnerships make sure everything is going smoothly and running the way it should.
According to the bootcamp’s mission statement, a part of their mission is to provide a world-class teaching and training facility for faculty, students and the biotech/pharmaceutical industry.
15 residents of Rhode Island are selected for this boot camp at a time because of the intense training, Lewis said. In order for the skills to stick, there needed to be a smaller group of residents. It seemed that it would be easier for these residents to learn and become prepared in a smaller group. This program is only for Rhode Island residents because of their partners in Rhode Island.
“We’re happy to run the boot camp for the area,” Lewis said. We just started here because of our partners.”
Lewis believes that it would eventually be a good idea for this boot camp to expand ro places just outside of the state of Rhode Island.
“We plan to do it again because there’s lots more Rhode Island residents who would like the training.”