Articles - Spring 2007 - return to index
Co-op internships give students a working start
Susanne Pechnick was in the right place at the right time when she landed a job as a phlebotomist at Oregon Medical Laboratories, the largest clinical and drug-testing laboratory in Oregon, headquartered in Eugene. The 48-year-old Pechnick was completing an internship at OML when a supervisor there told her about the job opening. “I was lucky because they needed someone right away.”
Pechnick was prepared. She had learned the lab’s procedures during her three-credit, 120-hour internship arranged through Lane’s Cooperative Education division. She says OML’s supervised training was very positive. “Everybody helps you. They don’t expect you to know everything.”
She praises Dr. Miriam Mazure-Mitchell, a naturopathic physician who teaches Lane’s phlebotomy courses and works directly with students to help them perfect their blood-drawing techniques.
Now Pechnick works at OML satellite clinics in Eugene and Springfield, using her interpersonal skills to calm
patients before drawing their blood for laboratory tests, while making a “good wage with great benefits.”
A stay-at-home mother for eight years, Pechnick decided to return to Lane to develop additional job skills. Lane’s phlebotomy training—consisting of two lecture/lab classes and a 120-hour Cooperative Education clinical placement—caught her interest.
The Cooperative Education program provides credit for work experience that relates to students’ educational studies. Faculty in more than a dozen Lane departments coordinate the internships, for which students enroll and pay tuition.
Andrea Newton, Cooperative Education division chair, says with 800 employers mentoring more than 2,000 Lane students each year, “Lane is the largest community college co-op internship program west of the Mississippi.”
For more information on Cooperative Education, see http://2011sitearchive.lanecc.edu/coop_ed/ or call (541) 463-5203.
