Meet Maria Bennes
“Teaching students what they need to know, what’s truly industry- and job-relevant, in the time that I have them, is the most important thing.”
What happens when a pharma trainer, academic workshop lead, and high school teacher are all the same person? You get a blueprint for science education that actually prepares students for real biotech work. We sit down with Maria Bennes, a biotech instructor at Blackstone Valley Regional Vocational High School, to unpack how tailored communication, hands-on practice, and community support turn nervous ninth graders into lab-ready talent.
Maria traces the throughline of her career—education as audience-aware communication—from teaching doctors and patients about new therapies to running stem cell workshops for researchers, and now guiding teens through tissue culture, ELISAs, and bioreactors. She explains why BioBuilder stands out: a soup-to-nuts ecosystem of curriculum, purchasing pathways, troubleshooting support, and an active community that helps teachers deliver impactful labs under real-world constraints. The result is a PD model that’s flexible, accessible, and grounded in biomanufacturing fundamentals like aseptic technique, upstream processes, and quality mindset.
We also dive into the vocational program design that mirrors a workday: safety briefings, lab coats on, then hours of wet lab practice. Students earn OSHA 10, ACS safety, and Six Sigma micro-credentials while mastering pipetting, chromatography, Western blots, gel electrophoresis, transformations, and transfections. With equipment like biosafety cabinets, CO2 incubators, spectrophotometers, and small bioreactors, learners build muscle memory and judgment—not just vocabulary. The culture reframes “failure” as iteration, so confidence grows alongside competence.
If you care about STEM pipelines, workforce readiness, or simply making science feel possible, this conversation offers practical takeaways for teachers, students, and industry partners. Subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review with the one lab skill you think every student should learn first.
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