HAZLETON — A program to train Hazleton area students for careers in science, technology, electronics and mathematics is going to college.
Vytal Plant Science Research, a nonprofit organization that supplemented STEM training at three middle schools this year, opened a technology laboratory in Lackawanna College’s downtown center on Thursday.
As a partner with Vytal, Lackawanna College will offer courses to college students in the lab, but there also will be certificate programs that students can finish in weeks.
“They can get training and get into work,” said Michelle McGloin, Lackawanna’s director of grants and strategies.
Dr. Shobha Rudrabhatla, Vytal’s chief scientific officer, said the lab that will offer gene sequencing fits into Vytal’s strategy for bringing STEM education to Hazleton and other areas of Northeastern Pennsylvania.
Rudrabhatla wants to draw students from primary, middle and high schools to the lab “to actually participate in the research.”
She is developing a curriculum for students who want to work in the lab on Sundays. Students from Charis Academy, formerly Immanuel Christian School, will visit the lab on Fridays for their science classes.
The lab can develop plants for economic uses such as by manipulating a hemp plant to produce more bioplastic.
Rudrabhatla also plans to invite teachers to the lab so they can share their experience with their hundreds of students.
During the school year that just ended, Rudrabhatla led a program in which 1,100 students from Valley, McAdoo-Kelayres and Maple Manor elementary/middle schools received STEM education and did projects. Her long-term plan calls for expanding the program to more schools in Hazleton and throughout Northeast Pennsylvania,
Superintendent Brian Uplinger of Hazleton Area School District, said in addition to the work that Vytal does at middle schools, the lab program at Lackawanna offers students opportunities to enroll in college courses while still in high school.
Dr. Vahid Motevalli hopes the program will help replicate at Penn State Hazleton what happened at Penn State Harrisburg where he is interim vice chancellor for academic affair and a program to develop bio-based products with a grant from the National Science Foundation drew 250 students.
A grant of $963,000 from National Institute of Standards and Technology and a Workforce Development grant helped fund the lab and a mobile science lab that parked outside the Lackawanna College center at 2 E. Broad St. on Thursday.
State Sen. David Argall, R-29, Rush Twp., asked about tie-ins between the lab and Little Leaf Farms, which grows lettuce hydroponically at greenhouses 4½ miles away from the college center.
Motevalli said students can learn to manage the crops with artificial intelligence in the lab, which will have a small greenhouse.
Dr Shobha Rudrabhatla Vytal Plant Science Research talks about the lab space and how it will be used during at tour on Thursday June 19, 2025.(John Haeger / Staff Photographer)
Mark Peterson, looking at the microscopes in the lab, said students might be interested in taking a microscopic photography class offered at Hazleton Art League, where he is the executive director. He invited students to visit the league, two blocks from the college, to add an “A” for art and broaden their education from STEM to STEAM.
Dr. Stephen Schleicher, who recently sold his dermatology practice in Sugarloaf Twp., plans to conduct clinical trials in the Hazleton area on products developed at Vytal and Lackawanna’s lab through Best Skin Research, of Camp Hill, Dauphin County, a company for which he is principal investigator.
Vytal CEO Thomas Trite said the Hazleton program can bring STEM to students in rural areas anywhere and develop workers for technical jobs.
“What it’s all about is the students,” Trite said. “They come up with initiatives. They really get excited about it, and they get to build it.”