Kingston School District Superintendent Paul Paladino checks out
some of the equipment
PORT EWEN – A futuristic learning laboratory was unveiled Tuesday afternoon at Ulster County BOCES Career Tech Center in Port Ewen, where officials announced the arrival of advanced manufacturing equipment. The computerized numerical control machines are industry-grade, funded in part from a grant by the Gene Haas Foundation.
Concurrent is a second new program, the Innovation Science Lab.
“We’re excited about this project and what it will mean to our students,” said BOCES District Superintendent Charles Khorey. “It starts with inspiration, because the only thing we teach is the enthusiasm to learn. To paraphrase Aristotle, all learning starts with wonder.”
Assemblyman Peter Lopez praised the program.
“I don’t want to sound militaristic about this, but when you think about where we were in the 1930s and 1940s, our greatness came from the ability to produce things that we can use,” Lopez said. “Whenever you take a raw material, and you process and refine it, more jobs are created, more wealth is created.”
“Advanced manufacturing is a lot different than it was in the ‘30s,
and ‘40s and ‘50s, and even the ‘70s and ‘80s,”
agreed Harold King, vice president of the Council for Industry, a manufacturers’
association. “We’re working with our brains, not our brawn.
It’s programs like this which elevate the level of skills that are
taught.”
“These are not toys; these are real-deal machines, that people are going to go into a shop and use,” said Marty McGill, vice president of Allendale Machinery Systems. “I’ve been to some other programs; they’ve got table-top things. These are what the manufacturers are using there’s a big investment here.”
