first cohort go through about a month ago, 
and we’re looking to expand that to 201.”
Once in the door at a company like Agilent, 
skills grow and become transferrable, 
Goldberg says.
“People might be in manufacturing for 
two or three years, then find something 
in QA or QC,” she says. “We’re good at 
developing our people so they can take 
the next step in their careers.”
Agilent’s commitment to workforce 
development will continue, Flahive and 
Goldberg say.
“We’re here to stay, and we’re going to 
keep growing,” Flahive says. “We would 
like to have the talent pool grow with us 
and keep that science here in Colorado.”
Teacher Externships Bring 
Real-World Bioscience 
into the Classroom
Steamboat Springs High School science 
teacher Sarah Groenwald’s 2025 summer 
vacation involved, in part, designing a 
repeatability and reproducibility study 
on how to more accurately determine 
the fill volume of syringes containing 
injectable medications.
Not exactly a day in Colorado’s back­
country, one of the mountain town 
teacher’s favorite summer activities. But 
Groenwald, now 32, signed up for it.
She was one of four participants in The 
Institute’s Research Experience for 
Teachers, or RET, externship. Launched 
in 2014, RET provides middle and high 
school teachers real-world lab experience 
and help translating that experience to 
benefit their students in the classroom 
and beyond.
The externship is demanding. Over four 
weeks, teachers spend about 130 hours at 
one of three sponsoring life sciences com­
panies: AlloSource, Edgewise Therapeutics, 
or STAQ Pharma. There’s also 30 hours of 
training on how to bring their externship 
experiences to the classroom.
Groenwald, who teaches biology, chem­
istry, astronomy, and geology, worked 
in quality assurance at Denver’s STAQ 
Pharma, a 503B compounding pharmacy 
specializing in sterile injectables and 
other medications. 
“It was really interesting to see the pro­
duction process and the level of safety 
detail involved,” she says. “Coming from a 
teacher’s perspective, where you’re lucky 
if they follow directions, it made me so 
aware of the standard I want to be holding 
students to.”
The experience informed her teaching 
directly and indirectly. Groenwald’s 
lab classes now include a student team 
performing a quality assurance role for 
the other teams doing the actual lab 
assignments: checking materials in and 
out, monitoring lab procedures, and doc­
umenting problems.
Less concretely, but no less important, 
have been the cultural influences she 
picked up at STAQ Pharma. She saw the 
importance of structure, process, and 
diligent documentation on the ultimate 
quality, safety, and reliability of products 
critical to patients’ wellbeing. She also 
recognized a culture that was, as she put 
it, “very focused on embracing failure,” 
meaning if something goes wrong, one 
asks, “How can we backtrack and try to 
figure out how to make sure that doesn’t 
happen again?”
Groenwald holds her students to a higher 
standard on those fronts now, she says. 
She has also suggested to interested 
students that bioscience quality assur­
ance might make for an interesting and 
rewarding career for those who combine a 
knack for problem-solving with attention 
to detail.
The 150 students she teaches across 
six classes each semester spend their 
summers far from STAQ Pharma. But 
thanks to RET, they have learned real-
world lessons from Groenwald, who 
remains enthusiastic about her summer 
in a lab coat.
“I really thought it was awesome,” 
she says.  
“
It was really 
interesting to see the 
production process.
S A R A H  G R O E N WA L D
ST E A M B OAT  S P R I N G S 
H I G H  S C H O O L
Steamboat Springs 
High School Teacher 
Sarah Groenwald 
completed the 
immersive Research 
Experience for 
Teachers Program at 
STAQ Pharma.
38     2026-27 BIOSCIENCE COLORADO

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