UND Med School-Arizona Partnership Provides Workforce Training The clinical laboratory science (CLS) program at the University of North Dakota (UND) School of Medicine and Health Sciences has partnered with the University of Arizona (UA) to offer CLS certificate training program to UA students. Starting this fall, undergraduates at UA majoring in biochemistry can take classes through the existing and successful CLS distance learning program at UND. The credits from these classes will be put toward their biochemistry degree from UA and toward a certificate in CLS from UND. This will qualify them to sit for the CLS national certification exam. UND instructors will teach the lectures online while the university medical center and the department of pathology at UA will take care of the hands-on lab portion of the classes. Despite their distance from North Dakota, each partnership fortifies the UND CLS program, which supplies clinical laboratory scientists to much of the region. “The CLS profession is facing a workforce shortage that is reaching crisis mode as programs are being closed nationwide,” said Brooke Solberg, MS, MT (ASCP), an instructor with the UND CLS program and its certificate program director. “Every partnership we create makes our traditional, on-campus program less at-risk for closure, which means we can continue to graduate more than 60 students annually that will be able to populate regional laboratories.” “We chose UND as an educational partner for a number of reasons,” said Donna Wolk, PhD, division chief for clinical and molecular microbiology at the Arizona Health Sciences Center. “The UND faculty truly portrays all that is right and good about health care. They are team oriented, inclusive, open-minded, flexible, and most importantly dedicated to delivering the best in content and ease of use for their students.” The UND CLS program partners with about 15 institutions throughout the nation to provide CLS training through distance education, including Mayo Clinic and the U.S. Veterans Administration. There are also new agreements in progress with the University of Pittsburg Medical Center and Boyce and Bynum Pathology Laboratories in Missouri, both of which learned about the UND program through the UA partnership. -- Wendy Opsahl, Communications Director, Center for Rural Health, wopsahl@medicine.nodak.edu, 777-0871