Maria Bennes: A Veteran Educator Changing Lives with Hands-On Science

What happens when a pharma trainer, academic workshop lead, and high school teacher are all the same person? You get a blueprint for science education that actually prepares students for real biotech work. We sit down with Maria Bennes, a biotech instructor at Blackstone Valley Regional Vocational High School, to unpack how tailored communication, hands-on practice, and community support turn nervous ninth graders into lab-ready talent.

Maria traces the throughline of her career—education as audience-aware communication—from teaching doctors and patients about new therapies to running stem cell workshops for researchers, and now guiding teens through tissue culture, ELISAs, and bioreactors. She explains why BioBuilder stands out: a soup-to-nuts ecosystem of curriculum, purchasing pathways, troubleshooting support, and an active community that helps teachers deliver impactful labs under real-world constraints. The result is a PD model that’s flexible, accessible, and grounded in biomanufacturing fundamentals like aseptic technique, upstream processes, and quality mindset.

We also dive into the vocational program design that mirrors a workday: safety briefings, lab coats on, then hours of wet lab practice. Students earn OSHA 10, ACS safety, and Six Sigma micro-credentials while mastering pipetting, chromatography, Western blots, gel electrophoresis, transformations, and transfections. With equipment like biosafety cabinets, CO2 incubators, spectrophotometers, and small bioreactors, learners build muscle memory and judgment—not just vocabulary. The culture reframes “failure” as iteration, so confidence grows alongside competence.

If you care about STEM pipelines, workforce readiness, or simply making science feel possible, this conversation offers practical takeaways for teachers, students, and industry partners. Subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review with the one lab skill you think every student should learn first.

Learn more about BioBuilder's programs for students, educators, and industry professionals here 👉 https://biobuilder.org/

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Maria’s Background
• 2:00 Teaching Thread From Pharma To Academia
• 6:30 Discovering Joy Teaching High Schoolers
• 9:30 Finding And Evaluating BioBuilder
• 13:30 Inside The Biotech Builder PD
• 18:00 Vocational Model And Daily Lab Life
• 22:30 Skills, Equipment, And Certifications
• 27:00 Culture, Confidence, And Iteration
• 28:45 Advice For Curious But Nervous Students
• 29:30 Host Reflections And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Hello and welcome to Life Changing Science, the Bibuilder Podcast. I'm your host, Zee Sean, and my guest today is Maria Benez. Maria is a biotech instructor at Blackstone Valley Regional Vocational High School with over 15 years of teaching experience. Before moving into education, she developed training programs for major pharma companies, and today she's helping students build the lab skills and confidence they need for real biotech careers. Maria was one of the first teachers to pilot the biotech builder curriculum. Now an award-winning program connecting classrooms to the biotech industry. In this episode, I talked to her about her journey into education, what students really learn through the biotech builder program, and how hands-on science can change lives. Let's dive right into this episode. Mario, thank you so much for um coming onto the podcast. I believe you're in a tissue culture room right now.

SPEAKER_02: 0:57

I am. I am. I'm in my my class's tissue culture room.

SPEAKER_01: 1:03

Amazing, bright and early, and you have some classes to teach, I think, later this morning.

SPEAKER_02: 1:10

We have a full day. I have I have freshman students today. So as a teacher, I teach um a couple of grades. But yep, so ninth graders, uh 14 and 15 year olds. And it and juxtapose that with me being in a tissue culture room, and you can see how that would be a pretty exciting day.

SPEAKER_01: 1:28

Oh my god. I I don't think I knew how to spell pipet when I was 14. Uh, so that that's had that's super exciting. Um so how I wanted to start off was um you know, your career has such uh really fantastic arc where you've been designing curricula for pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer, um, and then to you know leading some other programs like learning programs at UMS Trans Medical School, and now you know you're working with high school students. Can you tell us a bit about you know that transition? What drew you from the world of like pharma and academia back into the classroom? And is it fair to say is it a transition? It's it's all education in a way, right?

SPEAKER_02: 2:10

I think I think it is all education. And I would say that is the common thread that's been through my whole career. If you had asked me when I was going through my graduate school, or you know, do you thinking about being a teacher? Um I would have said, no, that's not that's not one of my goals, not not really at all. I've got I've got a lot of ideas and plans, but being a teacher is not necessarily one of them. But I think that what I have found is that when you are in academia or in science, even, I would say for myself, um, you do a lot of teaching. And whether it's teaching your, you know, I was a TA when I was in uh my graduate program. And then after that, I had entered the world of pharmaceuticals and more on the idea of um training. So I wasn't in research and development. It was more about how to communicate for new drugs that were going to be um coming to market to communicate with all of the people that were going to be coming into contact with that. So that would be um doctors who would be using the drug and need to be educated on what that drug did, as well as even we also did some direct to patient communication. So I was working for a smaller company, we would go to pharmaceutical companies and create these pieces of education for them for whatever population and demographic they needed. And so, although I was thinking, oh, I'm working, you know, I'm I'm working in the world of pharmaceuticals, I really was doing education there, just was for different audiences. I really was thinking like very traditional education of like being in a school, being in a classroom. And what I was doing did not look like that. But what I learned at that time was really how important the right communication is for the right audience. Because if you are trying to explain a um a new product to a doctor, you're gonna use different resources and you're gonna use very different language, and their concerns are so different than maybe a patient who might be taking it. Or even in cases where we were working on marketing, working with marketing, like how would we want to accurately market that drug? And so uh that was really illuminating to me on how important communication was to all aspects of when you're educating someone. And so at that point, I was working with pharmaceuticals for a while. I was kind of itching to get back more into the lab and sort of be a little more um like a little more wet work, you know, um, and do some more research. I had at that point moved to UMass. And what I think allowed me to come into the position uh in the stem cell laboratory at UMass was my experience doing training. And so they saw that as an asset because I, you know, with having the background in science, but then also being able to create materials for different audiences, their plan was to teach different audiences about stem cells. And so at that time, I was um helping with their, we had a stem cell registry. So we were developing a library of um adult stem cells, and but we also were trying to hold workshops to teach people some of the protocols that we had developed because this was fairly new in um sort of in pluripotent stem cell time time frame. And so that was again another time where this is you're coming, you're bringing people in, and now we're talking about researchers who are very well versed in um all of these areas of science working with cell biology, but how do we introduce these new concepts to them so that they can take it back to their lab and be able to troubleshoot in their own lab? So that direct, what is what is the message that they need to help them do what they have to do? And, you know, I think from from there, uh, I was exposed to high school students, which I had never been before and really had never had my sights on being a high school teacher. But as a really fun part of our grant, it was an NIH grant that allowed us to do some of this. We were bringing in high school classes once a month. We get to bring in a high school class and show them about tissue cultures, talk to them about stem cells, and show them, you know, this, the, the world of cell biology and research. And those were my most fun days. And, you know, no uh nothing against teaching the adults in the room, because that was really fun too. But it was the high school students that had the best questions and perspectives so different than mine, and made me just think about, you know, okay, how do I, how do I make an analogy for this concept that is really gonna help them to understand it? And so I found myself being the the most creative and um having the most enthusiasm on those days. And that's that's really what drew me to then say for my next you know career shift is you know, maybe going into the high school arena. Um, but I do see education as being the common thread through through all of those things, the right message at the right time, so that the person who needs it can use it in the way that they need to.

SPEAKER_01: 7:20

How did you get involved with BioBuilder in particular? Like, was this something about you know the program's approach, the hands-on labs, just you know, the community that really click for you as an educator?

SPEAKER_02: 7:31

So I first came across BioBuilder through the Mass Life Sciences Center, which is a organization in Massachusetts that um is their mission is to create partnerships between the industry and then um students all along the pipeline. So I use the word students loosely because it could also be uh adults who are transitioning careers, it could be college students who are looking to get a direct career in the biotech industry all the way through high school students, and even I think they even have some middle school uh programs as well. So they work very heavily with the biotech uh community in uh Massachusetts, of which there there are a lot of companies, but also with the um uh the Department of Education in Massachusetts as well. So they have a a uh program on their webpage where you can look for different as an educator. So it's you know, if you're an industry, you can look for partners. And if you're an educator, you can look for resources. And I think one of the things about what um what I love about being in biotech is that there's always new resources coming out, but they're not all created equal. And so, you know, as a um a teacher who's still I'm so enthusiastic about what I teach and giving my students the the uh tools that they need. Like I said, giving them the right tools they need at the right time when they're when they're here with me. Um, I really am I'm I'm pretty critical of the resources that are out there because it's it's easy to kind of throw up a web page and say, oh, you know, we want to educate your students, you can, you know, come for a tour, but what do they really get out of it? And what my attracted me to BioBuilder was that it's it's so robust. And so when I first was clicking through what they uh what they provide. So they can provide to regular science classrooms, and I can kind of transition to um how my classroom is a little, a little bit different than that. Um, but also that they are they have a community as well. So it's not just, you know, okay, here's a worksheet for your students, and then, you know, but you know, but hope you enjoyed that. Bye. There's a there's uh first there's a worksheet, and then there's a place to tell your story of how you interacted with this lesson that they gave. And then there's also resources where you can go and buy ingredients and do your own lab in your own classroom. So that that sort of soup to nuts approach of that they're not just gonna hand you something and then say, you know, good luck with that, really resonated with me. They're there to, they're there to help you and also want to want you to interact with them. And that's, I think, the the the part of it that as an educator, oh, this is really different than some of the, some of the, you know, and these are great companies, but this is it's maybe not their mission to to put out um resources for high school careers. And even when it is their mission, I've come across a lot of lessons where they they kind of, if it goes wrong, they go, oh, well, you know, sorry, that I don't know what happened. Um, I can tell you with BioBuilder when I've been working through some of the the lessons with them on the with the biotech curriculum that I can literally type an email to somebody at BioBuilder if I have a question or if it seems like it's not going quite right, and I will get a response like within hours and they say, Oh, look, did you try this? Did you try this? You know, there's they will they will sit in live chat with me. It's amazing the the resources that they provide and also the the support that they give. So teachers need that, you know, when we're in the classroom, we're there with our students and we we have a limited amount of time. Um, we want to give them something that's impactful, but if it falls flat because something didn't work or we didn't have the support, then you know, you the the message doesn't get through. And then the kids will unfortunately they sort of see that as, oh, that lab didn't work. That was a failure. You know, we know in science, like, oh no, we're gonna, you know, you do things a bunch of times and then and then you prove, you know, even then it's not perfect, you know, you're always optimizing, you're always perfecting it. But I have such limited time with with them that you want to get it right, you want to send home the message. So having that support is something that for me as a teacher was amazing, but then also these lessons that really supported my curriculum too.

SPEAKER_01: 11:53

Can you tell us a bit more exactly about the biotech builder that developed professional development program? Because I know you piloted it that program before it rolled out nationally. Uh, curious about the actual curriculum.

SPEAKER_02: 12:05

Yeah. So I think that um, so as I got more involved with the biobuilder community, what I what additionally attracted to me is that they really are presenting the topics that are not as easy for teachers to access it, but are really what students need to understand as they are graduating from high school and entering into really what this new world of science is, especially in places like Massachusetts, where biomanufacturing is likely to be uh something that they're going to intersect with at some point in their life, whether it's as a job or as a consumer, or even just as somebody hearing about it, to understand biomanufacturing can be tricky for teachers who were not involved in this part of uh science, is part of their career. So when that happens, it can be really scary because you're trying to learn something new while also teaching your students. And so what I found about the biotech builder curriculum was the way that the lessons are laid out for teachers. So this is like a train, you know, back to my industry days, a train the trainer session. They they are building lessons for teachers that seamlessly then translate to their students. Uh, this is something that, you know, I do have experience in tissue culture. I do have experience in um working with cells and working in, I did not work in biomanufacturing, but in terms of like the upstream process of it, I'm pretty familiar. So I was able to look at that and say, wow, you know, they are for somebody who's never been exposed to this before, this is a way to present it that is it's easy to understand. It's accessible in a way that is great for teachers and that it doesn't have to happen like over a six-month course over the summer. They really can access this training when they need to. For me, I did it over April vacation. Um, you could do this during the evenings, like you could take a few weeks and do it like over the course of like, you know, say at after dinner at night, you could do it, or you could do it during during the summer, but it's a short period of time. That flexibility with this content that traditionally you would think of as really, you know, kind of hard to understand, um, is something that I had never really seen before. So it was flexible and presented in a way that is easy to access, but then also that you you could you could be really, you could do it when it was good for you. So when you did have the time, not struggling in between classes or struggling to, you know, you know, smash it in um, you know, after you have just taught a lesson and you're kind of exhausted as well. So uh I also would say that this is this is an area that I don't think that I don't think that many other providers of this uh this kind of professional development are are trying to provide right now because it does seem like such a gap between where we end in high school science and where biomanufacture biomanufacturing starts. There's a big gap there. That gap is there's a lack of equipment in most classrooms. There is a lack of understanding of, you know, how how do we how do we take something like this that has sort of a timeline to it when you're talking about cell culture and make that work in the context of day-to-day lessons. So much thought was clearly involved in building that out for the biotech builder, the the PD, that how to make that work inside of different classrooms and how to take what seemed like really lofty content and bring it down to an understandable, um, you know, small chunks for teachers. Like that was so impressive to me. That would that was really where I was like, okay, what would I? I'm on board. I'm drinking, I'm I'm fully here for this, you know? Um, because I think it's it's rare. It's very, I haven't seen anything else like it. And for me, it was really helpful. So I could just kind of segue to my classroom is a little bit different. I'm in a I'm a vocational teacher. So the best way to think of that would be like at a so at a tech school where we have plumbing shops, we have HVAC shops, carpentry, we have a cosmetology shop in Massachusetts. We have biotechnology shops. And so I'm preparing my students for a uh career in life sciences. And so that sounds really broad because it is super broad. So, but I have four years, so I have the same students from freshman year all the way till senior year. And so I get new classes every year. So I have a full set of um, you know, four classes, and but I get to see my students much longer. So I see them across their whole high school careers as opposed to their academic teachers may see them for one year, um, you know, maybe two years if they're taking an AP class. So I really get to know my students and I get to see them for a longer period of time. My day, my day-to-day life is is pretty different. It almost looks more like an elementary classroom because my students come in at 7 a.m. and they don't leave until the end of the school day, 2:30. So I see them all day and then I see them Monday through Friday. So I have them 30 hours a week. So that doesn't really look like a traditional classroom. You think you you come in, you have science class, and then the bell rings and you go to math class, and then the bell rings and you you go to English class. But I see my students all day. They they do this for one week and then they have a week of academics. Then they come back to me. So that's where I lose them is I see them for a week and then I see another class for a week. But during the time that I have them, although it doesn't look like a high school classroom, it looks a lot like when you go to your job every day, right? So you go to your job, you're there from you know, six to seven hours a day, and then you go home. And that's really what we're we're training them for is that that professionalism. So what's going to happen after high school and to work in, in my case for biotechnology, in some aspect of the life sciences. A lot of my students do go on to work at either research labs or they're working in diagnostic labs as well. Um, and then I have a lot of students who do go to college as well. But when they do go to college, they have this, you know, vast knowledge of the labs that we do because we are able to do things like Western blotting. We are able to do, we do, we uh make ELISA tests and we understand all that. Uh, we do so many gel electrophoresis with DNA, it's like they can do it blindfolded at this point. And we get certifications on things like pipetting, uh, you know, we do uh safety certain, lots of safety certifications. So they do, they look very attractive to to laboratories who are looking for entry-level folks as well. In Massachusetts, you really, if you're even at entry level to you need to know about biomanufacturing. And so having these, you know, having the knowledge of upstream versus downstream, cell culture, what goes into culturing cells is so important just to graduate high school with that we are lucky to have this. But it's not something that most high schools have. And I also, you know, recognize that it's like that's even just in Massachusetts. So nationwide, it probably is a more a bit of a rare thing. So we have the opportunity to have this time. We have the opportunity to have some equipment. But what they've done with BioBuilder is scale it in a way that you really could bring it to any classroom, no matter whether you're like me and I have them all day and I have equipment, or you're an academic classroom and you're only seeing them one hour a day for five days, that you can there are ways to break that biobuilder curriculum down to make that fit. And I think that that scalability is that that's that's amazing for teachers.

SPEAKER_01: 19:57

I'm I'm just trying to think to, you know, when I was doing high school like 10 years ago, um so much, you know, curriculum uh has changed. Like what I what I learned 10 years ago and what people are students are learning now is has changed a lot. Um I wanted to learn a bit more about some of the content that uh is sort of an addition to the high school, already high school curriculum or AP biology, because biotech is sort of you said there's a bit of a gap between you know when they graduate high school and what they're expected to know at college and for you know, even just entry-level roles. Um what is some of that content itself? Like yeah, you mentioned like cell culture, tissue culture, et cetera. But is it also like you know, I learned about like uh what do you call microfluidics and you know the sonicator and mass bag, all of that in like second year? Do you feel that some of that equipment, how you how you use it, what's that used for? Is that is that now in like uh years grade nine and ten as well? Is is that something that's part of filling the gap?

SPEAKER_02: 21:01

Yeah, I think I think it depends so I think a traditional academic classroom, you're you're you would not traditionally use a spectrophotometer. Um, you would not do you would not, you might do one gel, uh like a horizontal gel electrophoresis, is what I hear from my students. Um it's a lot of you will learn a lot about a different a lot of concepts, but not actually the do the hands-on part. At a vocational program, that really is our goal, is the hand the hands-on part is the part that's the forward part. And so that is really our first mission is to give our students these these techniques. So we do learn a lot of they, you know, in our shop, we learn a lot about the the concepts as well. So I would say um that, you know, there's a fair amount of time spent researching as well as in rooms like like I'm in right now. But we do, uh, during the course of the the four years that you were here in biotech, you learn about, so you start by learning safety. We of course, right? We're in a lab. So you can think of it as like maybe the first month that you would be in a new lab as a as a um somebody who's working there, you're getting the certifications you need. So our freshmen get uh American Chemical Society certification, our freshmen get an OSHA 10 certification as well. Uh, we also then will do, we do micro certifications where our C our seniors actually get Six Sigma certifications. So, you know, trying to prepare them for lean manufacturing as well. But in uh in terms of our curriculum, we are guided by the Department of Education puts out frameworks for uh for shops, for any of the vocational shops or um are the CTE programs. And so we are our curriculum is guided by what the Department of Education in Massachusetts has deemed important after they partnered with industry to say, what do you need? So if we're gonna hire someone coming from a biotech shop as they graduate as a senior, what are the skills that they have? So again, it's that, you know, the the tie back to industry. And I think to, you know, kind of come full circle with it, that's where that teaching those students what they need to know in the time that I have them is the most important thing. So, what's the most important thing that I can teach these students so that when they leave here, they have what they need. Um, there's a lot that we could teach. There's there's so, I mean, my gosh, you know, it's for someone who's enthusiastic about science, like I can talk about science all day long, but to really go back to my roots of like pinpointing my mess and a message of what's the have to have? What do you have to leave here with? And uh for in biotech right now, having knowledge of all of the parts of biomanufacturing is really important in Massachusetts, as well as how to use uh the equipment that they're gonna encounter as well. So we have in my classroom, this would not be a typical academic science classroom, but in my classroom, I have uh a bunch of centrifuges. We have CO2 incubators, we have biosafety cabinets, they're sitting right over there. Uh, we have a we have a couple of mass uh specs, we have a bioreactor as well. I have a small bioreactor sitting on the table there because it's empty, looking at me. We have um we have many pipettes. So in my classroom, I think I have like we we did an inventory, like 150 pipettes so that everybody can be pipetting at the same time and you know, practicing that you know, small volumes uh and moving them. We use serological pipettes as well. We will also do uh chromatography. So we do a few types of chromatography as well. Um, and then you know, we're always sort of looking to like what's what's next, what are what are we missing, and where can we partner with other schools? They, my students will learn how to use an autoclave safely. So there's a lot of skills that they will leave here with that would be very similar. I think what I have found is to somebody who's either in their first year at a lab, working in a lab somewhere, or the concepts that we come across to teach those skills end up being like second or third year during their college career. So they when they, you know, my students who do go on to college, uh, they say, oh wow, like so I, you know, when I was my lab courses, my my my professor asked me to be their lab assistant because they said, Does anybody done you know Western blotting before? Has, you know, has anybody done southern blotting before? And I, you know, and they're like, okay, you're helping me get prepped for the class because you've done it before. So that's that, you know, it's a lot of fun. We do we our students will do CRISPR. Um, our students will, you know, we do uh transformations, we do transfections, you know, all a lot of stuff that you wouldn't normally encounter until you're in college. And, you know, I mean, I have to say selfishly, it's really fun for me as a teacher because um it's you know, while I could talk about science all the all day, it's so much more fun to do it, you know. I mean, so we're do it, we are, we start every morning, we sort of talk about what we're gonna do. We usually have one big lab a week, but we're, you know, after we, we all all of us are, you know, having our snacks in the morning, then we put everything away, lab coats on, safety goggles on, and then we're in the lab and we are working. It's so gratifying to see students who are like they are loving doing the labs and say things to me like, oh, you know, like the labs were always like my favorite day when I was, you know, in in uh middle school. And then, but it was like once a term, maybe we'd get a lab, you know, or maybe once a month. And now it's every single day. It's every day. And so, and I also have had students who say, I didn't think I was, I didn't think I was good at science, and that, you know, it's like, oh, you know, they say, but now in here I realize I am good at science. I say, Yeah, it's you know, it's it's a lot, science is a lot of things, you know. So, and it and science is fun. And they learn that making mistakes aren't really mistakes most of the time. It's that you're getting better at it. You're you're getting, you know, you're taking a protocol and you are optimizing it or you are, you know, tailoring it to what you needed to do. So it's not a mistake, it's it's making it work for you and making it better. And so that recasting is a lot of fun for me too, with students. Like, no, this is what it really like. And we I planned to do this a few times, you know, not just one and done. And so, um, so that part is very selfishly as a teacher, it's very fun for me to just get to be in this in this environment.

SPEAKER_01: 27:45

Would your uh message be to like um students that are interested in joining the biotech uh builder curriculum uh right now being part of the bibuilder program who are sort of not too sure about you know whether they want to pursue science or biology even? Um, and they're you know a little bit on the fence about or or just like something it's very scary to just you know join a program, get into the lab, especially in in grade nine.

SPEAKER_02: 28:10

I think that it can be really scary to join um to join a program, especially if you think it's it's gonna be it's gonna be really hard. And science can be really complicated and hard to understand. Uh, but if you're interested in it, what you're gonna find with with the biotech builder and biobuilder is that everybody there is just like you. They're a little bit scared, but they're a lot interested. And the best thing about having people like around you like that is that you're gonna build a community so fast. You're gonna ask each other questions, you're gonna learn from each other. Uh, the synergy that you find when you're in groups like that with other folks who are interested in the same thing as you and also maybe a little bit nervous is something that is precious and it's it's irreplaceable. So if that is, if this is the the the little push you need to jump into that pool, then I say do it because you're you're gonna find people like you, and it will absolutely be one of the best things that you do.

SPEAKER_01: 29:14

Thanks once again to Maria for joining me today. What really stayed with me from this conversation was something Maria said about the Biabuilder community, that everyone who joins is, you know, a little bit scared, but a lot interested. She reminded us that learning science isn't about having all the answers. It's about curiosity, connection, and shared growth. So when you surround yourself with people who are just as excited and maybe just as nervous as you are, that synergy really becomes something irreplaceable. If you would like to learn anything more about what Marie and I discussed today, please refer to the show notes.

SPEAKER_00: 29:48

Join me for the next Biobuilder Podcast. We'll welcome another wonderful guest whose career has been influenced by Biobuilder's life changing science. See you next time.

unknown: 30:00

Mm.