Finger Lakes Community College students who have completed cooperative assignments at local advanced manufacturing companies will talk about their experiences on Monday, May 11, at 5 p.m. at the FLCC Victor Campus Center.
The guest speaker, Rochester Business Alliance President and CEO Bob Duffy, will talk about the importance of education and training of a high-tech workforce to address the skills gap for the economic growth of the Greater Rochester Region.
Five students in the FLCC two-year instrumentation and control technologies, or IC Tech, program will explain a wide range of projects and how their academic curriculum helped prepare them.
The event is free and open to the public; however, due to limited seating, attendees should RSVP to Sam Samanta, FLCC professor of physics, at Sam.Samanta@flcc.edu or (585) 785-1105.The Victor Campus Center is at 200 Victor Heights Parkway, off Route 251, west of the village of Victor.
IC Tech, established in 2010, is an interdisciplinary program, which includes aspects of computer, electrical, and mechanical engineering. It was designed to meet the needs of regional employers, some of whom are unable to fill jobs due to a lack of qualified candidates. All students are required to complete a cooperative, or paid internship, to earn their degree.
Nearly all the IC Tech graduates in the first two classes have had a job or job offer by graduation due to the close association of the coursework to the skills local companies are looking for in new employees. Some of the current students are already working full-time.
The co-op presenters are as follows:
Dan Poehlein of Fairport will talk about his co-op and job of helping build robotic system for masonry at Construction Robotics in Victor.
Kris Moore of Farmington will discuss her co-op and job as an engineering test technician and lab facilitator with Trialon Corporation at Delphi in Henrietta. She is part of a team that performs accelerated testing on prototype gasoline direct fuel injectors.
Chad Hutchinson of Canandaigua will describe his coop work of building Programmable Logic Control systems at Unique Automation in Palmyra.
Tyler Levickas of Phelps will discuss his co-op and job of automating aspects of sapling planter for apple orchards at LaGasse Works of Lyons.
Caralita Colosimo of Penfield will describe her co-op and work experience building machines at Optipro Systems in Ontario.