CHS Celebrates 50-Year Anniversary of Clinical Laboratory Science Program
Published December 12, 2024
By Darlene Muguiro
UTEP College of Health Sciences
This year, the Clinical Laboratory Science Program (CLS Program) is celebrating its golden anniversary. In honor of the 50-year milestone, the College of Health Sciences and CLS Program are also hosting a special fundraising event for student support, with a focus on development of a book fund, financial awards, and student stipends for those who are attending preceptorships outside the city (https://pickaproject.utep.edu/project/44054). The campaign will culminate with a reception and picture gallery in April 2025 on the UTEP campus.
The CLS Program was established at UTEP in 1975 as the Medical Technology Program. Since then, the program has evolved to meet the growing demands of the healthcare industry and has been instrumental in training skilled laboratory scientists who contribute significantly to the healthcare system. Notably, 80 to 90% of laboratory scientists in the region are UTEP graduates.
“Most people are not aware of this, but about 75% of the decisions that doctors make are based on the findings of medical laboratory scientists from analytical tests of bodily fluids,” said Dr. Lorraine Torres, director of the CLS Program. “These types of skills are in such high demand that the majority of our students are hired during their preceptorship year or shortly thereafter.”
The program, which accepts students beginning in their junior year, is widely known for its rigorous curriculum, which focuses on molecular diagnostics, chemistry, hematology, blood banking, and infectious disease courses, as well as lab sessions. In their senior year, students complete a clinical preceptorship with one of the program’s many partnership sites. Rubi Gasca, a 2011 graduate of the CLS Program, and 2023 CHS Gold Nugget awardee, recalls this experience as being one long “job interview.”
“From day one, they’re watching everything you do,” Gasca said. “You have to go in there enthusiastic and ready to learn. A lot of students right out of graduation get hired at a lot of these hospitals conducting the preceptorships. It’s really cool that we have the opportunity to showcase who we are and learn our profession while still being in school.”
In addition to the preceptorship, students are required to practice their clinical skills in the community. The CLS Program incorporates service hours into the preceptorship courses on an annual basis, and students then volunteer in community and campus health fairs, including UTEP’s HOPE+ initiative, which serves El Paso’s most vulnerable citizens. Service is embedded into the courses to ensure students participate in community-engaged learning, one of the many components of the UTEP Edge initiative designed to prepare them for their professional lives after graduation.
“Our students are required to participate, and this is in addition to the hours they complete in rotation, so they work very hard,” said Elizabeth Camacho, CLS Program clinical instructor and clinical coordinator. “The activities are recorded and put on their transcripts, so when they graduate, they have an official record of their service.”
While the majority of the program’s graduates begin working in the laboratory immediately after completing their Medical Laboratory Science (MLS) certification exam, others take advantage of the program’s strong foundation to catapult them into medical school or other graduate programs. Eduardo Aguila, a 2001 graduate, completed his MBA and a PhD in Interdisciplinary Health Sciences at UTEP. He is the managing member and technical director at WE Medical Labs, an independent reference laboratory in El Paso, and owner of WE Reliant Administration and Consultancy, which specializes in clinical toxicology. He says that the top skill he gained while in the CLS Program that he continues to use is a strong work ethic.
“I think that the program’s focus on discipline and just being with other hardworking students on a daily basis really rubbed off on me,” he said. “It was nice to have the same group of people to go to classes with, where we could bounce ideas off one another. The social part of being with my group was also pretty great. I met my future wife there as well as my future compadre, the godfather of my children.”
Aguila says that he would encourage any student considering a career in health care to investigate the CLS Program as a top option.
“If you want a career in health care, the CLS degree is ideal. The applied skills you gain really make this program stand out, and you can find a job after graduation,” he said. “If you want a career in the laboratory, you can do that, and if you want to follow the path to medicine, you can do that, too. This degree opens a lot of doors – there are a plethora of options as compared to other science or allied health fields.”
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Go Miners!
For more information about the Clinical Laboratory Science degree, please visit: www.utep.edu/chs/cls/
