ASCP Internship Academy Sparks Students’ Interest About Laboratory Careers

ASCP has launched an Internship Academy designed to expand young people’s awareness about careers in the clinical laboratory. It enhances the Society’s already significant offerings to cultivate a new generation of laboratory professionals.   

The ASCP Internship Academy will serve as a comprehensive resource for the ASCP community to encourage, educate, and facilitate laboratory professionals to develop and maintain a STEM-based internship program to expose students to careers in the clinical laboratory industry.   

The Internship Academy program is available for purchase in the ASCP Store and provides video teaching sessions on everything from how to start an internship program and how to calculate your own laboratory staff vacancy rate, to how to convince hospital executives to allow the laboratory department to use unspent personnel funds to establish the internship program.     

“The program takes the heavy lifting out of establishing an internship academy on your own,” explains John Baci, MBA, director of the Internship Academy, who played a key role in developing the ASCP program. Mr. Baci is the senior director of the Pathology Foundation Financial Operations and Strategic Planning and chief operating officer of Children’s Hospital Pathology Foundation, Inc., part of Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH), in Boston, MA.  

The Internship Academy is directed toward high school juniors and seniors, students in STEM programs, as well as college students. The inspiration for the academy came, in part, from the career internship program Mr. Baci established in 2010 at Boston Children’s Hospital.   

The impetus for the Boston Children’s internship program came from Mr. Baci’s frustration about the lack of employers in his rural community (a nearly 40-mile commute from Boston) to offer high school students, including his own children, internship or job opportunities. That contrasted with the plethora of opportunities available to students at the many healthcare institutions in Boston.   

One day, he called his daughter’s high school science teacher and asked if he could visit a classroom and talk about careers in the laboratory. The teacher responded enthusiastically. Two weeks later, Mr. Baci arrived at the school to talk about anatomic pathology, autopsies, specimens, and other topics. Students from the entire science division showed up for his presentation in the school auditorium.   

“I was surprised at how engaged the students and teachers were,” he recalls.  

From there, his outreach efforts in his community took off, as did the internship program he created at Boston Children’s Hospital. One person he mentored was Erika Figueroa, a high school friend of his daughter.  

“One time, I was at their house, and he asked me what I was interested in for a career,” she says. “I was a biology major in college, but I did not have a direction. I mentioned something about working in a medical examiner’s office. He told me about his laboratory and the job opportunities there and asked if I wanted to work as an intern in his department that summer.”    

For a month, she shadowed a variety of laboratory staff at Boston Children’s. She was most intrigued by the intricate work of a pathologists’ assistant. That prompted her to change her career focus to train as a pathologists’ assistant. Ms. Figueroa is currently certified as a pathologists’ assistant and works at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. 

“I think of my profession as the middleman between the surgeon and the clinician. With each specimen, I am reminded that it represents a patient,” she says.  

Several years ago, ASCP staff learned about Mr. Baci’s outreach activities and invited him to help with the Society’s recruitment initiatives. Through that invitation Mr. Baci has now become acquainted with other ASCP colleagues involved in workforce development initiatives.   

Mr. Baci also expressed much gratitude to Boston Children’s Hospital Pathology Executive Director Latisha Rider, who has been instrumental in not only providing support to their program but also for modernizing interns’ laboratory experience to include state-of-the-art laboratory operations. Mr. Baci also shared that over the years many BCH administrative and technical staff have served as outstanding mentors to the internship program.    

“ASCP has been delightful to work with, as we create a program that is sustainable and will help us to grow the next generation of laboratory professionals,” he says.    

Learn more about the ASCP Leadership Academy here.