Moving Careers From Manufacturing To Biotech

  48 year old makes move from manufacturing to biotech

From the Charlotte Observer: Ex-Pillowtex worker retrained for biotech.

It's nice to see someone taking the attitude of, "If you think you can, then you can."

[Randy] Crowell spent 20 years at the mill as an electrician and electronics specialist. He worked two other jobs after Pillowtex but was laid off from one of them.

Crowell relocated to San Antonio, Texas, in 2005 to be near his daughter and a grandson who had severe birth defects. After being unable to find a job in Texas, he decided to take biotech classes at a community college to earn an associate degree. When his grandson's health improved, Crowell returned to North Carolina last fall, moving to China Grove.

He was hired at the campus in February and works as a lab technician handling DNA sequencing for the David H. Murdock Research Institute, the nonprofit group that owns and runs the campus Core Lab.