When the President of the United States came to Onondaga Community College two years ago to celebrate Micron Technology's decision to build a massive chip-making facility about a half-hour drive from campus, it set in motion a whirlwind of related activity.
During the President's event, Micron announced it would gift the college $5 million for the construction of the Micron Cleanroom Simulation Lab. That $5 million was matched by both Onondaga County and New York State. Construction started one year ago, and the ribbon will be cut on the new facility in 2025, along with new training centers for CNC Machining, Welding, and HVAC in the Whitney Applied Technology Center.
Micron's eventual arrival also prompted OCC to create a related academic program, Electromechanical Technology (ELM), which welcomed its first students in the fall of 2023. "When the program was first developed, Mike Grieb came to me and said 'how do we get information out to schools?' We started communicating with Superintendents and had a lot of schools interested right away," said Amber Ingalls, OCC's Assistant Director of Concurrent Enrollment.
Ingalls oversees OCC's robust College Credit Now program which provides more than 3,500 high school students the opportunity to earn OCC credits while in high school. Mike Grieb is a Professor in OCC's School of Computing and Applied Technology who, along with fellow Professor Gino Duca, was at the forefront of creating and implementing the new ELM program.
The overwhelming interest led to a series of meetings with school districts. "There was a lot of curiosity, a lot of questions, and a lot of 'how do we make this work with schedules in the high schools,'" said Ingalls. Professors Grieb and Duca created an ELM Implementation Guide to assist schools in scheduling and planning courses, and maximizing the number of credits students could earn. The process also included training high school Instructors to teach ELM courses.
Presently ELM courses are being taught in six districts and BOCES to over 300 high school students, and those numbers will keep climbing each semester. One of the school districts where the ELM program is in place is West Genesee where Stephen Ficarra has taught technology classes for 22 years. "What we're teaching isn't preparing people just for Micron. We're preparing students for jobs that exist everywhere. I think this is super important to the community."
Ficarra is in the unique position of teaching both at his high school and on the OCC campus. He comes to campus one night a week to teach college students in the Introduction to Technical Problem Solving (ELM 100) course. "Teaching here has definitely made me better on the other end (at West Genesee). Spending time with Mike and Gino, talking to them, emailing back and forth, has made me better at my job. It's been an awesome experience. I want to continue doing it. It's been great."
"West Genesee has been a tremendous partner in this adventure. Steve brings amazing energy into his classrooms. It's great to have him doing everything he's doing at West Genesee, and to have him teaching classes here as well," said Professor Duca.
"We're seeing a lot of growth, a lot of interest. Some districts are heavily involved. Others are implementing one or two classes at a time," added Professor Grieb. "We're encouraging schools to take what you can, implement and integrate it, and grow it into a significant number of credits so the students can move forward quicker."
The increased interest in technology-based classes is also resulting in a shift in how families view higher education. "I have a lot of parents asking whether it's better for their kids to go for a two-year degree or certification. They're saying 'maybe college isn't for everybody. We don't need to go into debt for a couple hundred grand and come out and there's no work for them.' We really need kids who can go to work and operate machines," said Ficarra.
