Joan O’Connor
RET Teacher of the Week!
Week Five:
Entering her 10th year at Lynn English High School, Joan O’Connor is no newbie when it comes to working in the lab. Joan teaches Biology and Biotechnology at Lynn English for grades and levels ranging from 9th-12th. When the school began their Biotechnology course, Joan was able to implement her 15 years of Biotechnology experience into her classroom.
She began her career working in Clinical Labs, studying and testing hematology, urinalysis, chemistry, and toxicology in either hospital or clinical reference laboratories. She later moved her career to the industry side of lab work, focusing more on Quality Control in biotechnology.
“It was easy to carry my testing skills over from clinical to industry work,” Joan explains. “When I moved to industry, I worked with product samples versus patient samples.”
She conducted sterility testing, endotoxin testing, environmental monitoring, water quality analysis, and various microbiological assays.
“As I gained experience, I was hired to set up or improve current laboratory practices, train laboratory analysts and supervise daily activities in dynamic biotech settings. It was a great career move from working as a medical technologist to biotechnology.
But working in industry proved to be more risky than expected.
Joan explains, “…often companies do not make it and can’t get their products to market. A lot are ‘high risk, high return’ where the investors put a lot of money into the product which is a high risk, but if the product is successful, you get a high return. But if it doesn’t work, the company closes their doors.”
This has happened twice in Joan’s career working in biotechnology companies.
“The first time this happened, I went to teaching at a middle school level for two years, and the second time, I decided to try high school level, which I enjoyed a lot more. I was able to incorporate my lab skills and teach my students the techniques I had acquired through my career.”
Her lab skills have also proven to be very helpful working in Prof. Ekinci’s lab this summer in the Photonics Center, working to develop a technique to decrease the time needed to establish whether antibiotics are effective against specific bacteria.
“I have been really helping the lab out by focusing on general microbiology practices, ordering materials required for testing in the lab. A lot of the supplies I will get after this program will help me do more of the micro-biology testing with my students, and allow them to participate hands-on as opposed to observation by demonstration.”
After completing the RET program, Joan will be able to share her newly extended laboratory experience with her students. Her expertise helps to excite and engage students in science when it is their turn to put on their safety goggles and perform laboratory experiments.
Watch Joan discuss her research: