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Hudson Valley Community College Gets $3 Million in Funding from National Science Foundation to Promote High Tech Careers(Targeted News Service Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) TROY, N.Y., Aug. 27 --The State University of New York's Hudson Valley Community College issued the following news release: Hudson Valley Community College will receive almost $3 million over the next four years to help educate and drive interest in the nanotechnology and semiconductor manufacturing industry in the Northeast. The funding, which comes from the National Science Foundation, will create the Regional Center for Semiconductor and Nanotechnology Education (RCSNE) that supports a range of initiatives to educate and motivate students toward careers in those growing industries. Hudson Valley Community College has a two-year semiconductor manufacturing associate degree and has actively been collaborating with other educational institutions and industry since the program was created in 2005. The highly competitive NSF grant, which is about $750,000 each year, will support an array of efforts, including promoting semiconductor and nanotechnology-related programs at other community colleges and four-year institutions; internship-based training and workshops; and the coordination of student recruitment for those programs. In addition, the RCSNE will develop pipeline programs that will promote careers in the industry to students in grades K through 12. Funding also will go towards researching and meeting workforce needs of the industries. Partners in the grant include General Electric, Global Foundries, IBM, Tokyo Electron and SEMATECH. The college also will team with The University at Albany, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Rochester Institute of Technology, SUNY IT and a range of community colleges across New York, Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut to spread the word about career opportunities and facilitate training in these industries. The ongoing construction of the Global Foundries chip fabrication plant in Malta, IBM's commitment to site an Advanced Integrated Circuit Packaging Research and Development Center in upstate New York and General Electric's plan to build an advanced battery manufacturing center in the Capital Region underscore the fact that this is a career field expected to growth both locally and nationally. It's expected that the Global Foundries facility in Malta alone will create 1,465 permanent manufacturing jobs by the end of 2012. "We are honored to be a catalyst in helping drive a new wave of careers in upstate New York," said President Andrew J. Matonak. "This was a highly competitive grant process and we are pleased that the National Science Foundation understood our ability make high tech training happen here in the Capital Region and across the Northeast." TNS sm92 100828-sm92-2976441 71SibanaM (c) 2010 Targeted News Service |