My next trip to the Texas A&M PreClinical Trials Center on the College Station campus is set in stone now for 4/23/2024. I have a business expo there that night in Bryan, Texas, about 2 miles away, and I'm going early to sneak a new peek at their lab.
I've been informed that the admission front desk on floor 1 and their card-pass security system have been active now for almost 2 full years, so I won't be able to slip in with the other visitors and walk around freely as I did once before. This was shortly after they opened the lab there about 3 years back.
Then you could walk in with other authorized visitors, hit your own elevator button and go wherever.
Not any more.
But, as fate would have it, my oldest daughter Emma, has just accepted a position as a head researcher in the Texas A&M system and will be based at a Texas A&M research facility just NW of Corpus Christi, Texas. She told me, due to her position, she can get me a touring appointment to walk the building and check on the lab facilities. This does not get me into ENZC's office of course, but it does let me look at an open lab room open near ENZC's second floor lab suite, that sort of thing.
My goals are:
-- To confirm the lab is still there and in operation, hopefully finding out its busy with something going on inside, because it could have been
shuttered by now, and we were never told about it. No kidding. I called the Texas A&M phone lines, all of them associated with the building and its services, and no one answers, and no voicemail box ever returns a call. Nor do their email lines for the public ever respond. Shows poorly for the Texas A&M organization of Science Management personnel. You might as well be calling CC direct, because no reply will be forthcoming. So, I plan on seeing for myself.
-- Secondly, I get to ask some questions about tenant relations with the university, so I'm making ENZC, of course, the center on my queries. I'll be asking about lease space and terms, what did ENZC do for example, because as I've been told, these are not private secrets at a state funded university unless high priority security has been requested and paid for by the lessee. I'll also be asking about what activity and hours does someone like ENZC post, so I can get an idea of just how busy or empty that lab may be on average.
I'm also going to ask what kind of staff, numbers and duty hours are being used in a lab like ENZC's, are they all using ENZC personnel, or also using Texas A&M techs and student interns? That can tell me a lot of how viable ENZC is or not. Is this lab for show and some work, or a lot of work so they can show?
And then, since I'm allowed to hang around for up to a couple of hours, I hope to see some ENZC staffer go out for lunch, where I can pass by and ask a direct question or two, which is encouraged on building tours. "How do you like working here?" "Is it exciting in your lab?" "Will your work here be remembered?" Short, sweet, see if this a real operation or not and if some tech there finds it really promising.
That's my plan. Wish me luck. I'm booking the visit for either 10:00 or 11:00 AM in the late morning, because I have to go set up our company booth over in Bryan that afternoon.
GLTA
