What are the courses like? Is there actual lab work involved?
Most of the courses in the Biotech program are very laboratory centered. The Basic Lab techniques and Instruments course, and each of the core courses in the second year involve at least six hours per week, in addition to lecture. The lab is run more like a working laboratory than a teaching lab, and students work both collaboratively and independently on real laboratory procedures, and complex tasks. They are responsible for procedures as they would be in a working lab, form preparing the solution to analysis of the result. The lab becomes their workplace, and they make a transition from students to laboratory professionals. Is the PCC lab as good, as well-equipped, as a real lab? Actually in many cases it is better. Many laboratories focus their activities on one or two areas molecular biology and tissue culture or protein chemistry, for example, and thus have only the equipment needed for those activities. Since we work in all of these areas, we need to be exceptionally well set up.
