Opportunities for students wanting advanced careers in biology will continue at Paris Junior College after an articulation agreement with the University of Texas – MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston was renewed again.
“This has been an amazing program for a select group of students,” said Dr. Jack Brown, PJC biology faculty and Division Director of Math and Sciences. “That connection shows how strong our laboratory sciences are. At the beginning of the agreement 10 years ago, UT-MD Anderson came into our labs to make sure we had the proper equipment and were operating at the right level.
“Since then, the students we’ve sent there have all just knocked it out of the park. They’ve graduated and been at the top of their class,” Brown said. “UT-MD Anderson likes that PJC students arrive having used pipettes and done electrophoresis; they have hands-on experience that most kids just out of high school – or even at most community colleges and universities – have not had.”
PJC has a huge advantage due to small classes sizes, making upper level techniques and equipment affordable. With large undergraduate classes, most universities reserve these experiences for seniors or post-graduate students.
“At PJC, you’re going to get to actually interact with lab equipment such as PCR machines that copy DNA and perform high end procedures you would not get in touch for a while elsewhere. Everyone gets their own microscope here; they don’t have to share or wait to use it,” Brown said. “It does take time to learn how to use one.”
Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) machines are used in research labs and clinical diagnostics to replicate DNA, detect DNA sequences, perform DNA fingerprinting, forensic analysis, molecular cloning, and diagnose genetic diseases, and detect pathogens. Where students previously had to share one PCR machine, PJC has acquired more and now students may work with them through an app on their phone.
UT-MD Anderson’s program is strong on hands-on learning in the lab, Brown says. There are some classes, but the final year is spent entirely in the lab. Students must meet all the conditions and go through an interview process, but to date all PJC students have been accepted.
The five programs covered by the agreement are medical laboratory science, cytogenetic technology, cytotechnology, histotechnology, and molecular genetic technology. These programs produce graduates in high demand nationwide in places such as hospitals, reference laboratories, corporations, cancer and constitutional genetic laboratories, academic or research facilities, biotechnology companies, pathology labs, chemical industry labs, pediatric and genetic counseling labs, and many more.
Graduates from UT-MD Anderson have gone on to stellar careers, according to Brown. One of the first students to finish, Madison Stripland, started her own genetic testing company at the beginning of the COVID pandemic.
Another student, Michael Edenhoffer, graduated from UT-MD Anderson’s Molecular Genetics Program in 2020, interned at Yale University, and subsequently attended Semmelweis Medical School in Budapest, Hungary.
For more information about the program, call or email 903-782-0319 or jbrown@parisjc.edu.
Photo: Maegan Martinez (left) and Jessica Sanchez perform gel electrophoresis. The process separates DNA fragments from a virus and results in DNA fingerprinting.
