PROVIDENCE –– From its start, the University of Rhode Island’s biomanufacturing program has churned out workers for the region’s biotechnology companies, setting up laboratories with miniature bioreactors and filtration devices that mimic the cavernous, high-tech hatcheries where companies such as Amgen grow top-selling drugs.

Now, the university is discovering a new use for its costly equipment, inviting biotechnology companies to ship their employees to the Providence campus for a bio boot camp.

The program has helped URI make use of its facilities during spring break and summertime –– when students hang up their goggles and lab coats –– and it is beginning to generate revenue at a time of shrinking state support and a falling endowment.

“There are not a lot of facilities that do training for the biotechnology industry,” URI Prof. Gregory Paquette, the program’s director, said. “There are virtually none in New England.”

URI introduced its master’s degree in biotechnology in 1986. But its major investments in the field did not begin until 2002, when Amgen, the country’s largest biopharmaceutical company, began pouring billions of dollars into a manufacturing complex in West Greenwich.

Using a curriculum designed in part by Amgen, URI has for several years trained undergraduates in the biomanufacturing technologies that allow drugmakers to coax living cells to produce therapeutic molecules. The process requires complex purification procedures and intensive sampling and testing.

The bachelor of science program involves an internship –– at companies such as Alexion Pharmaceuticals, in Smithfield, and Neurotech, in Lincoln –– that often results in a full-time job before graduation. (The remaining requirements in genetics, microbiology and other subjects can be completed part-time over the next three years.)

But with tuition only $12,420 for the first year, the program is not exactly a cash cow for URI.

Biotechnology companies have deeper pockets.

Two years ago, URI began offering special classes for biotechnology workers, typically weeklong courses taught by consultants and scientists from Pfizer, Genzyme and other companies.

Alexion, impatient to staff the former Dow Chemical plant it renovated and reopened last year for $80 million, commissioned the first course designed for a single company.

It trained 50 of its new workers at URI, paying $50,000 so its own staff could focus on readying the plant for production instead of building and operating a private training center.

“It’s a very cost-effective way to address this need,” Alexion spokesman Irving Adler said. “URI is a great local resource.”

Similar training is occasionally available at industry conferences, where biotechnology workers can learn to use new technologies and to comply with constantly changing government safety regulations. But those classes generally rely on lectures rather than hands-on activities that involve sterile rooms and remarkably costly, pilot-scale gadgets.

“We can provide the facilities so they don’t have to reinvent it on their sites,” John O’Leary, the director of special programs at URI and the former mayor of Cranston, said. “Initially, I don’t think we’ve made a lot of profit. But it has the potential to be very profitable.”

URI’s industry program has expanded to four courses offered four times a year, providing a steady revenue stream for the public university. Participants, typically reimbursed by their employer, pay $2,200 for a week of lectures and lab experience. An individual course brings in about $33,000 to URI; the four courses generate $528,000 annually.

The profits have been modest, given the cost of paying industry and university faculty to participate. But a new contract with Lonza Biologics, the Switzerland-based contract drug manufacturer, has made possible a significant expansion.

At the urging of Anthony Rotunno, a former guest lecturer for the URI biotechnology program, Lonza has agreed to use URI as the principal training site for employees at its growing plant in Hopkinton, Mass.

To design a special course, URI dispatched a faculty member to Lonza to study its production processes. Starting last September, Lonza has been sending 20 employees to Providence for a two-week course held six times a year.

“It’s very different than any other industry,” Paquette, a microbiologist, said. “You’re making miracle drugs, you’re not making yogurt.”

The contract is worth $350,000. And to improve the training facilities, Lonza recently donated $100,000 to URI to help pay for equipment and the opening of a $250,000, 2,400-square-foot lab that will separate the industry training program from the space used by students.

The new lab –– including a 20-seat lecture room and space for mixing chemicals –– will open in April, in time for the next Lonza training session.

“It’s amazing how it’s really starting to take off,” Paquette said. “If you’re doing something industry wants, they’ll pay for it.”

This is not the first attempt by URI to reduce its reliance on tuition and state aid. For years, the university has trained nurses at Miriam Hospital, taught engineering at Raytheon and lectured about chemistry at Pfizer.

Seminars in management, grant writing and business writing are also available for hire or at the Providence campus on Washington Street. A psychological testing service for police and firefighters also brings in extra cash.

In all, URI’s special programs netted $450,000 last year.

The biomanufacturing program, however, has become the fastest growing and potentially most lucrative of the special programs.

The university may soon hire a full-time manager for the industry training courses. And if a biotechnology research complex is ever built in the Jewelry District, the program could expand further, helping to draw biotechnology firms to Rhode Island and bringing researchers and potential students to URI.

bgedan@projo.com