Kimberly Vandiver: Set on MLS from the start

Author: Erin Wilson

Alumna Kimberly Vandiver knew before she graduated high school that she wanted to work in medical laboratory sciences (MLS). In her junior year genetics class, she caught sight of a brochure for Clinical Laboratory Sciences Day at St. Louis University in Missouri, where she grew up. 

“For a high school kid to do a [polymerase chain reaction] (PCR) lab was pretty unbelievable. We just didn't do those kinds of things in regular classes,” Vandiver said. “Doing those types of things and spending time with the people in the field, I knew that this is what I wanted to do with my career.”

Vandiver had only visited Minnesota once before; after discovering the University of Minnesota’s MLS program, she scheduled a college visit, already committed in her mind. She liked that the program facilitated clinical rotations rather than putting the onus on students to coordinate it independently and because she was in the top 25% of her graduating class, she paid the in-state tuition rate. She arrived in Minneapolis for the program and at first felt like an outlier; while most everyone else stumbled upon MLS as their career choice, she’d known early on it was the right place for her. 

In the lab, she shared a bench with a young woman named Mallory, whom she chose to stick with even after they were no longer assigned partners. She, Mallory and other classmates grew close, always studying together and devising strategies to remember all the organisms for their microbiology class. 

“[My time in the program] was amazing,” Vandiver said. ”We celebrated our end-of-year finals and our graduation together. We socialized outside of school. It was just a very tight-knit program that I feel is almost hidden in some ways, because everybody is so close. We were with each other 24/7 practically [because of] the program and that was just really nice.” 

In 2009, Vandiver graduated from the MLS program into an economic recession. With very few job opportunities and a lot of qualified graduates, she feared not being able to find a job. Back during the Clinical Laboratory Sciences Day in high school, a lab manager had given her a business card and gotten her a job that she worked at during college breaks when visiting her hometown. So, after graduation she returned to St. Louis to work more hours at the company— the same company she still works at nearly 20 years later. 

“When I came back, it was very apparent that my career was built off this solid foundation that the University of Minnesota provided, and I don't know that I would have been as successful without it,” Vandiver said. “I just felt like it catapulted me to being a peer with everyone, even though I didn't have the years of experience they did. [The program] just did so much from a foundational standpoint.”

While at the same company, she’s worked in a variety of roles. Her first full-time position was as an evening shift lab technologist, next as a blood bank supervisor, after that in a children’s cytogenetics lab, then in a Laboratory Information System role, and most recently as an Epic Beaker application analyst. She feels the University’s MLS program really prepared her to excel in her current position. 

“When end users put in requests, they don't provide all the information… but because I have a lot of hands-on experience from the program and my previous job experience, I can ask the [right] questions to get the necessary answers for the requested build, or offer suggestions to automate certain workflows in the system,” she said.

There’s also a shortage of robust MLS programs in the country, she believes, which leads to worker shortages, an issue with which her company grapples. 

“I'm grateful that the program still exists— there are not enough of them. In St. Louis, we have a very difficult time finding qualified technologists because we don't graduate enough people. People are always impressed when I tell them how many people I graduated with,” Vandiver said. “So I think it's great that the University has seen the program as important and has continued to carry it on, because the need is there.”