Harris selected as next education coordinator for Clinical Laboratory Scientist Training Program

Kendra Harris has been selected as the next education coordinator for the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine's Clinical Laboratory Scientist Training Program.

Jiunn Huang, the department's current education coordinator, soon will be retiring and will work with and mentor Harris.

Harris previously worked as the director for the Clinical Skills Education and Assessment Center and a manager of the Doctoring Program at the UC Davis School of Medicine. She is an assistant professor of microbiology for Los Rios Community College District and had served as curriculum and course coordinator. Harris is a licensed clinical laboratory scientist (CLS) and has worked in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine's laboratory as a CLS supervisor and bench CLS.

The department's CLS training program traces its origins to 1942, when it was part of the Sacramento County Hospital. The program has graduated almost 400 students, who score in the top 1 percent nationally on their board-certification examinations. More than 60 percent of the clinical laboratory scientists employed at UC Davis Health system trained in the department's program. The department's CLS graduates also are employed at hospitals and laboratories throughout the Sacramento region. US News & World Report named clinical laboratory scientist a "best career for 2011."

The training program provides trainees with 12 months of clinical laboratory science training. After receiving the graduation certificate and successfully passing the California licensure examination, trainees receive a California license and are eligible to work in research and industrial laboratories, public-health agencies, doctors' offices, pharmaceutical companies, other health-care institutions, and some marketing and consulting agencies.