It just wasn't what Gonitzke had hoped for when she earned a microbiology degree from Montana State University three years ago. She graduated in the medical technology option, but because she lacked an internship and proper certification, she wasn't able to do the blood profiles, chemistry evaluations and other tests that the lab's technologists did. The pay wasn't as good either. Evie Senter of Livingston faced a similar problem. She, too, earned an MSU microbiology degree in the medical technology option but had nowhere to complete an internship.
Internships are hard to get.
Two years later we had. Hudson created the 3 plus 1 Program, a regional training project with the University of North Dakota Medical School. Students take three years of classes at MSU, spend a summer semester at the medical school in Grand Forks, N.D., and intern for 8 months in a hospital laboratory in Montana, North Dakota or Minnesota. At the end of four years, students have a degree, clinical training and, predicts Hudson, between three and five job offers apiece. We just had to figure out how to put the two together.