Chemical Technicians

CURIOSITY is helpful because the best technicians are like good detectives: They notice subtle details. "Techs seem to be very good at this. They see something unusual or just not normal, and they bring it to the attention of the chemist they are working with," Krystosek says. In fact, because the technicians are the ones doing and seeing the work, they are very often the ones who make discoveries of new knowledge.

To gain these needed skills, most chemical technicians complete an associate's degree in an applied science technology program. Gone are the days of hiring high school students as technicians, says recent graduate Daphne Eggers, a senior lab technician in specialty coatings product development at Eastman Chemical in Kingsport, Tenn. Industry is "looking for people educated in the latest technology and who are highly motivated," she says. "Technicians of today hold associate's degrees and some hold bachelor's degrees."

It's true that many hold bachelor's degrees; in fact, some companies hire only B.S. chemists to fill their technician positions. "The pharmaceutical industry tends to take B.S. and above and make technicians out of them," ACS's Stevenson says. "That could lead to difficulties in retention of chemists, since a lot of them tend to go back to school." Yet it emphasizes the trend that more and more is expected of the technician for the chemical industry.

Other companies, on the other hand, prefer to hire graduates of community colleges with a two-year associate's degree in applied science (A.A.S.). "The A.A.S. chemists are, in my opinion anyway, much better prepared as entry employees as technicians than anybody else," Stevenson says. "The reason for that is they have a whole lot more experience in actually doing the kind of analyses that they would wind up doing in industry. B.S. chemists tend to gloss over some of that, and they get more theory than they get hands-on."

A good two-year chemical technology program provides, most of all, laboratory time. "Our students spend 18 hours a week directly in the laboratory, learning instrumentation and techniques," says Tom Mines, chemical technology program coordinator at St. Louis Community College. The school, which graduates 10 to 20 students a year, has gas chromatographs, high-pressure liquid chromatographs, nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers with carbon-13 capabilities, UV-visible spectrometers, atomic absorption spectrometers, a graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometer, GC-mass spectrometers, and capillary electrophoresis, he describes.

"I say to our students, 'You'll never see a graduate student sitting between you and that instrument.' " Mines adds that he knows his students may not work with these exact instruments, and many will need to learn the ins and outs of procedures and instruments entirely different from the ones they train on. But "what I'm trying to teach them is the art of troubleshooting while getting the data, doing the calculations, and reporting the results.

"I see our students as laboratory generalists. They can do analytical, environmental, industrial, or biotechnology work. I think with a little training, they can go anywhere. Their training has been so broad, and they have so much hands-on that they really do have a degree of confidence about what they can do. They are adaptable."

The average age of students at St. Louis is 29 or 30, Mines says. More than 50% are women. Rarely, Mines says, do students come directly from high school into a chemical technology program.

"They are coming from the school of hard knocks. They've been out flipping burgers, and they come back saying, 'I know what it means to not have an education.' " He says a chemical technology program offers a solid degree that will raise their salaries and get them quickly back into the workforce.

Chemical technology programs often face difficulties in both recruitment and retention, Mines says. Many students struggle to finish the two-year degree because they pay their own way. "I guess it is the nature of community colleges," Mines says, "but it is frustrating to find students who have the ability to succeed, but the life they are living outside the classroom is not conducive to the educational experience. They've got kids at home. They've got spouses who aren't helping or supporting them. They're working 30 to 40 hours during the week and on weekends just to make ends meet."

School may be hard to juggle, but for single parents and others with many demands outside of work, the job of chemical technician is actually a good fit, Murphy says. "A job as a chemical technician lends itself well to having balance in your life. It's a job that you can leave at work. A chemist or an engineer who is a project manager very often ends up working extra hours or taking work home, whereas a technician is typically a nonexempt employee. If they work overtime, they get paid overtime. They are not expected to take work home. A technician's job is really a nice job for someone who has other things going on in their lives, because they can leave work at work."