Looking for a career in science?

Received the following in an email today:

When you're looking to move up the career ladder, look to ASCP's Online Career Center. It's the place where you'll find hundreds of jobs with top employers in your field.

Recruiters from top laboratories and hospitals like ARUP, Abbott, Roche, The Johns Hopkins, Beckman Coulter, Spectrum Labs, Cleveland Clinic, and many local facilities are there looking for you.

Start your search for the best job today at: www.ascp.org/careercenter

ASU doesn't seem to care ...

... about the fact that for a million dollars, they can keep a department which will churn out jobs which pay ~$50K to start in a field which has a national average vacany rate of 10.4% (in other words, every individual who obtains certification would most likely find a job immediately). Nope, they don't care about that. Perhaps they'll dump the program off on the local hospital system instead.

Due to space constraints on the Tempe campus, and because of the applied nature of the degree, consideration was given over the past few years to incorporating the program into the Phoenix Biomedical campus or relocating it to the Polytechnic campus. However, it was assessed that such plans would require more than $1,000,000 in new laboratory construction and/facility renovation in order to adequately administer the program to undergraduate students on either campus. Like other states with similar programs, funding from local hospitals could subsidize the continuation of the program and this idea is being examined.

Sheesh.

I do want to point this out though ... the commenter on my last post on this topic hit the nail right on the head IMO:

The loss of this program would be a detriment to the school and the community especially as this is the last accredited program in the state of Arizona. I will admit that the program has a high cost per student when compared to some degrees however I think that cost must be balanced by the good it will provide the community. After all this is a state university and it main purpose is not to make money but to provide and produce the educated workforce the state so desperately needs.

To me, this seems that the state should step in and demand that the Med Tech program remain open. IIRC, Oklahoma (where I used to live) didn't have a Med Tech program at any of the universities within the state and they were always suffering huge Med Tech shortages.

Why would Arizona take a play out of the playbook of a state which has chronic shortages of critical health care workers?

ASU closing Med Tech program in cuts to science courses

In this day and age, closing off a source of vital job training is silly. It's a crying shame when that closure comes at the hands of a supposed institute of higher learning, which I imagine Arizona State University fancies itself.

At any rate, received this email from the American Society of Clinical Pathologists (ASCP) today:

DON'T CLOSE THE DOOR ON LABORATORY EDUCATION

Nationwide Campaign to Save ASU's CLS/MT Program


Tell Board of Regents, University Leadership:
Don't Close ASU's Clinical Laboratory Sciences/Medical Technology Program
Arizona State, Others Closing Doors to Laboratory Education


ASCP urges all members of the laboratory team to help!
Take a few minutes to help halt the closure of Arizona State University's ASU's CLS/MT program: send a message that laboratory professionals are critical to the health care team and that the documented shortage of laboratory professionals is reason to keep training programs open!

Visit http://capwiz.com/ascpath/issues/alert/?alertid=12713266&type=CU

There are approximately 15,000 open positions for Medical Technologists in the United States. Some states, such as Oklahoma, don't have university Med Tech programs so it's not that Med Techs are being churned out in massive numbers. However, more students are getting certified as laboratory professionals through technical colleges and distance learning programs, like this one that offers online health science programs and degrees. The growing for-profit education sector accounts for some of the lack of interest by many health science departments in medical technologist programs. I'm not sure if ASU…. I'm not sure if ASU is the only Arizona school with a B.S. degree Med Tech program, however even if it were not ... closing it down is still a big mistake IMNSHO. If you think so too, click the link and send those emails out (actually the site does it for you, you just put in your information).

Pragmatic Me

I was reading RPG's blog, and his latest entry is one which ultimately deals with why he is a scientist. It boils down to, as he states ...

I don’t do science because it’s useful, or important. I do science because I find it beautiful.

I have no problem with that, but that is certainly not how I found myself in the world of science.

For me, it started in high school. We took that awful preliminary SAT test ... called, oddly enough, the PSATs. When you take that test, it comes back to you with a list of careers you might be ideally suited for. At the top of the list for me: Medical Technologist. A career I had zero information about. So, I started looking around (this was a time before that series of tubes called "the internets") and got literature from a number of universities. They all painted a nice picture about their Med Tech programs. I always did better in my english, history, and political science classes as a student, but I just couldn't see myself in a career within those fields. Exactly what would I do? is something I constantly asked myself. Be a librarian? was the response that my mind often came up with.

I wanted no part of being a librarian.

A medical technology position wasn't "high profile", though it could be a good start towards getting into a med school. What med tech provided however was an almost guaranteed source of employment from the minute I was given my diploma. As a child who grew up solidly middle class, this was a big deal. I saw how my parents struggled with keeping food on the table and a roof overhead, I saw the intense work ethics of my dad and grandpa, I knew I'd have to eventually do the same ... and being a librarian didn't seem like a very good source of income. I don't say this to degrade librarians, because pay may be really good ... but no one ever gave me any information as a teenager on what it was like to be a librarian. When found in such a vacuum, you fill it the only way you know how *shrug*.

At any rate, so based on the results of that PSAT test, and the information I found on Med Tech (not to mention those PSAT's seem to be serve as a recruitment tool for colleges because every Med Tech program in the land started sending me brochures on their particular program), I figured I'd look at colleges that offered the program. I looked at several, and each one of them spoke to the point of a low number of Med Tech's but a high demand for them. Base pay was good $16/hour (at the time) and bound to increase every year, so I figured I'd give it a try. It certainly seemed more challenging than any other subject I'd considered majoring in.

Beauty alas, never factored into the equation.

Now, as I've progressed in my career, I've been excited by several aspects of my work ... most notably, I find it cool that if I do an experiment ... I may very well be the first person EVAR to do that particular experiment to answer that specific question on that specific organism. But that isn't what keeps me going. What keeps me going is that paycheck I receive. Now, it helps that I love what I do. I most certainly do, but my particular job affords me many benefits which allow me to love it, and want to persist in doing it.

I guess there are those who will persist in doing something because they find it beautiful. I'm happy for them. For me, that simply isn't the case. I think what I do is important AND useful, both for the environment, my field, and more importantly myself ... and all for different reasons. I'm afraid beauty simply doesn't fit into the equation, or if it does it's not a factor which is weighted very heavily.